Release Date: April 23, 2024
Size: 6 x 9
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-57869-114-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2024933374
eBook: 978-1-57869-115-9
Booksellers and Libraries: Order Info Here or at Ingram.

SYNOPSIS

Hopeful, passionate, and full of sharp discoveries about the dangers of the world, Fire on a Circle is an exploration of the fires we traverse to become our true selves. Written in free verse, verse monologue, and ancient Nordic formats, these poems dig for the roots of the spirit through exploration of survival, self-discovery, and a passion for connection to the author’s ancestors and landscape. Grounded in years of poetic and runic studies, Ward weaves the mothers of her family, the struggles against addiction, and pagan practice throughout this debut poetry collection. 

PRAISE

“Kim Ward’s poems wrestle fiercely with life forces, some massive as a hurricane, and some that surge from and through a single tender soul. Her poems are deeply embodied, spoken by a passionate ‘I’ engaged with a tantalizing ‘you’ that is sometimes human, sometimes more. As in ‘mouth of time, moth of words…’ spiritual fires may dance within wordplay but they leap out as searing embers. ‘God takes the tongue and roots it elsewhere, lights your bones with eternal flame…And the blessings burn.’”

–Judith Chalmer, author of Minnow

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“Ward moves seamlessly from one emotionally authentic poem to another, each of which celebrates in its own way the states of being known as love and survival. These poems demonstrate a clear sense of unapologetic presence, of herself, but also of an ‘other,’ a love interest, or a muse she invokes. Along the winding roads of verse she takes occasional and welcome refuge in poetic prose, and, midway through the book, gives the reader solace in a collection of informal odes to the Germanic Runes. In one of these, ‘Raido,’ (which indicates a ‘Journey on horseback,’) we find ourselves on our own journey in the circle of life:

The pursuit is fire on a circle, water anointing my bare head,
And the clear aster of a new-moon sky blazing blackly above.

She stokes the fire that blazes the reader through a series of personal and communal stories of devastation, truthfully told, without even a hint of sentimentalism.”

—Buffy Aakaash, author of Untangling the Knots

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“Kim Ward’s debut collection Fire on a Circle brings a fresh voice to Vermont’s poetic landscape. The poems in this volume reveal important truths about human interactions with nature, with each other, and with other beings on the planet. The image invoked by the title conveys a warning and the closely observed depictions of life in Vermont fly in the face of the storybook setting promoted by the tourist industry. Ward renders with searing clarity the danger lurking behind the postcard representations of the Green Mountain State. The middle section of the book employs the time-honored configuration of the rune to send contemporary dispatches. Here and elsewhere, the stark urgency of the poems is leavened by suggestions of hope and possibility. This work will resonate long after readers’ initial reading. I recommend that you pick it up now.”

—Linda Quinlan, author of Chelsea Creek, winner of the Wicked Women Poetry Award sponsored by BrickHouse Books

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“Kim Ward’s debut collection will stir you up with lines like, ‘Although I thought I was / A woman, turned out I was / A flea on the back of a cow.’ You’ll also be curious—how does one mind have all of these different ideas in its head, and how is it that they all fit together cohesively in one book? Ward gifts us poetry about growing up in rural Vermont as well as her observations of the mundane and the tragic. She writes provocatively about sexuality and womanhood, and even includes a section about ‘Green Mountain Runes.’ Poems like ‘Vermont Calendar’ will grab you by the guts and haunt you. Others will make you laugh really hard. Overall, this book is well-crafted and unpredictable with intriguing line breaks and vast subject matter that somehow all make sense together.”

—Robyn Joy, president of the Poetry Society of Vermont

REVIEWS & IN THE NEWS

Burlington Free Press, June 21, 2024: Stay cool by the pool this summer by reading these books with Vermont connections

Orca Media, April 13, 2024: PoemCity Rootstock Poetry Reading VIDEO.

The Montpelier Bridge, April 2, 2024: Book Reviews for Poetry Month 

The Eagle Times, March 19, 2024: Three Vermont poets reading debut books April 13 in Montpelier

MEET THE AUTHOR

Kim Ward is a poet, playwright, visual, and theater artist. She is the founder of The Vermont Playwrights Circle and received her MFA in Performance Poetry from Goddard College in 1998. Her poem “Angel in the Fire” received the 1999 Playwrights Showcase Award by the Vermont Actors and Theater Artists Association and was also accepted into the New Frontiers Conference in 2000. She has lived in Montpelier for over twenty years and teaches English at Norwich University.