Author Anna M. Warrock

Readings

  • April 2, 10 am – 5 pm
    Celebrating Poetry Month! with Human Error Publishing
    Slate Roof Press readings:
    11:30 - Noon Anna M. Warrock, Richard Wollman
    3:30 - 4pm Ed Rayher, Janet MacFadyen
    Hosted by Gateway City Live

  • March 19
    I'm reading with the Row Twelve Chamber Music Ensemble in a program of music and poetry, "Spirits of the Green World." House Concert. Look for Row Twelve at the Harvard Public Library later this year.
  • I’ve added some more garden writing, beginning with a short garden humor piece. Click here.


I’ve an essay in Dark Mountain: Issue 17 Spring 2020. The Dark Mountain Project began in England 10 years ago to chronicle “the extent of the ecological, social and cultural unravelling that is now underway. We are making art that doesn’t take the centrality of humans for granted … tracing the deep cultural roots of the mess the world is in.” Ask for this biannual of over 60 artists and writers at bookstores or order online at dark-mountain.net

I am pleased to be included in Vol. 6, Chapter 11 of Visual Verse: An Anthology of Art and Words. Please check out this international ekphrastic journal here. My poem, "The Lease" is on page 37.


Slate Roof Press poets have a full roster of readings. For more information, click here.


From the Other Room

by Anna M. Warrock

"A remarkable coolness pervades the poems, in content and sensitive attention to form....these poems are mature and gorgeous." - Danielle Legros Georges

Winner Slate Roof Press Chapbook Contest

Order from Slate Roof Press here.

Price: $17.00
Chapbook
Letterpress Cover
Handsewn Binding
ISBN: 978-1-63587-418

The effect is quietly shattering. These poems may or may not console the poet. They will console the rest of us, who have been there, and who owe Anna M. Warrock our deepest gratitude.
- Martín Espada, author of Vivas to Those Who Have Failed

Read more about the book here.


The Salmon Go All the Way Upstream

They are fish. They live in the cold ocean,
breathe water, eat other fish.
They in turn are eaten. What do they know?
They know they are salmon and where
they were born. They live in the cold ocean,
but when it is their turn to die, when it is their turn
to return, they know what to do.
They remember where they were born,
exactly where they need to go.
And they go. The female salmon stop
roaming the ocean, eating other fish.
They leave the endless deep and turn
toward land to find the river mouth
that spit them forth. They enter the mouth, 
go upriver. The female salmon travel together.
The male salmon leave the cold ocean,
the eating of other fish. They seek
the mouth that spit them forth
from the land’s constriction, and enter.
They go back guided by the memory.
They go to make the memory
continue in their way. They go to make
the salmon continue in the old way.
They swim upriver, leap the falls.
The river narrows. Swimming is harder.
The salmon push between rocks, against water
to the shallows where they were born.
They go to the heart of the land. There they meet
and agree. The female waves her body
and lays her eggs and moves off. And the male
waves his body, sprays his seeds and moves off.
Then the female and male salmon die.
In the shallows, having given birth
to eggs and seeds, a promise to their memories,
they die. The salmon go all the way upstream.
The salmon go all the way to death.

 

Published in Wild Earth

To honor the activists. With reverence for Nature and Gaia. To recall to the heart all that happens around us that can inspire and hold our lives in balance. To counter the horrible forgetfulness of our stewardship of this Earth. This poem celebrates one cycle of life and the Earth's ability for renewal.