Overview

This collection is conceived as a poetic trail guide. Each poem is connected with a specific trail and readers are encouraged to hike the trail themselves so that they can experience the poem in the setting in which it was written (the ultimate writing Easter egg!). Photography and hand-drawn maps further encourage the reader to get out onto the trail. The poems include a variety of form and length and are written from the perspective of a low-key single mom hiker (all of these trails are incredibly accessible for a general audience). The collection looks at popular national parks in Utah (Zion, Bryce, Arches etc) and also lesser known trails such as Whiting Canyon in Mapleton, Utah or Sego Canyon, just off the Interstate. Connecting to the land in Utah also involves connecting to my grandparents, a talented photographer and an avid painter, and my pioneer ancestors. The past and the present mingle in the slow moving landscape that we both love.

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9781958720103

Table of Contents

Reviews

""One thing I love about Marianne's work is the way it reaches toward connection. The poems in her manuscripts deal with physical, historical, spiritual, and cross-temporal layers of connection with the Utah landscape. At once vivid landscapes and self-portraits, these poems look at the ways the land has, at once, drawn her out of herself and come to define her experience. ""What is it about this place,"" she asks in one piece, ""that unwinds the soul, one vertebrae at a time?"" These poems read like a map of Marianne's heart, rendered in red rock, pulsing toward the many pasts that inform her meetings with a land suffused with meanings."" --James Goldberg

Author Information

Marianne Hales is a poet, essayist, and playwright living in Springville, Utah. She has been published in Dialogue, Segullah, The Hong Kong Review, Helicon West, and Rocky Mountain Runners. Her plays have been produced across the U.S. and adapted for film. She is honored to influence writers at Brigham Young University and Western Governors University and co-founded Provo Poetry, a non-profit dedicated to bringing poetry into the community at large in unusual ways, and Speak For Yourself, a creative writing open mic. She is also the Head Curator for the Plein Air Word Gallery.

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