Idaho Poetry Prize Winner, 2023 (Lost Horse Press)
“Anna Leigh Knowles’ collection In the Country of the Hard Life and Rosebuds is a fulsome elegy of substantial power. The book is personal-historical discovery and a series of resurrections, with Louisville, Kentucky as setting—it reads like a novella, cinematic and peopled by memorable characters. Knowles’ work is a gathering of tender, beyond-wise descriptions of Appalachia and its citizenry: “The heartache music helps him remember who he is.” In the Country of the Hard Life and Rosebuds will win you over as poems resonate with stories of finding joy and love and connectedness in a land of considerable heartbreak. In her words, “they come from the hope / I was honed in, and I lean into it/ hard enough, layers of their clothes / rustle from decades ago.”—Roy Bentley
Pre-Orders Available Below:
Washington State University Press
Finalist for the 2021 Brittingham Poetry Prize, University of Wisconsin Press
Wisconsin Poetry Series, 2021
“A poetry of narrative tension, lyrical beauty, and incredible, breath-stealing imagination. These poems show place as a reliquary of trauma but they also show how joy and love can rise in even the most broken places. Grief struck and haunted, these are points of hope and light in a way only poems can be.”
—Judy Jordan, author of Carolina Ghost Woods
“In her astonishing debut collection, Anna Leigh Knowles probes the anguish of a childhood and young adulthood. These poems shimmer with dynamic lyricism, deft storytelling, and unwavering candor. Knowles spins the beautiful, crackling music of a world that simultaneously dazzles and wounds.”
—Brian Barker, author of Vanishing Acts
University of Wisconsin Press, Wisconsin Poetry Series Order’s available here
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