$14.95 / ISBN: 9781943977079
Purchase: Sibling Rivalry Press store / Amazon.
Mother May I is a series of linked narrative poems that explode the stereotype of the ideal mother as they explore the raw, bodily realities of childbirth and parenting young children. The book begins in the midst of daily struggles that come with raising toddlers and uses flashbacks in later poems to address the themes of miscarriage, infertility, childbirth, and the complexities of parenting. The result is a collection that highlights the duality of joy and pain present in the every day, and the immediacy of death in the face of vibrant life.
Cover art courtesy of the author. Cover design by Seth Pennington.
In her debut collection Mother May I, poet Tina Parker writes about the universal worries and joys of motherhood with exacting insight--and an admirable lack of sentimentality. Her poems charm while seesawing through unflinching accounts of day-to-day family life and the honest ecstasy of a new motherhood, all more deeply felt after reading poems on miscarriage and fertility doctors. In the tradition of Wordsworth, Parker’s poems parent us all through “real language” of every day steeped in “vivid sensation.”
—Kathleen Driskell, poet, author of the best-selling Seed Across Snow and Kentucky Voices selection Next Door to the Dead
