landing
by nora kirkham
Nora Kirkham’s debut collection Landing unearths poems from alpine meadows and retrieves words from cold Atlantic waters. Traversing the subway system of Tokyo and the coast of Maine, it explores the radiant, hidden things in landscapes, encounters with transcendence, history, and love. Written over a span of years, Landing is a constellation and a time capsule of an itinerant era.
praise for landing
Landing starts on a plane and takes us to places around the world, from a lake in Maine to the streets of Tokyo, from an Irish church to the pyramids of Egypt. But despite this expansiveness, Kirkham anchors these poems in the smallest of details: a fish “silver and transfigured,” the “yellow silk” of a globeflower, the crows who “clipped a clothing hanger to their nest.” Landing is ultimately an emotional journey into the depths of memory, and the path is vibrant with color and nourished by ever-present waters. You’re going to want to come along.
—Matthew J. Andrews, author of The Hours
Nora Kirkham crafts a poetic terrain that unassumingly cracks open the distance between body, self, earth, and the divine, only to reassemble them in a transfigured, animate frame. If you have ever felt a deep sense of homesickness—even for a place that doesn’t exist—her poetry will bring you home.
—Gabriela Milkova Robins, poet
about the author
Nora Kirkham is a writer and poet. Originally from Maine, she was raised in Japan, Australia, and Romania. After studying English and history at Gordon College in Massachusetts, she completed an MA in Creative Writing at University College Cork and an MLitt in Theology and the Arts at the University of St. Andrews, where she was also an artist-in-residence at the Institute for Theology, Imagination and the Arts. She is currently a PhD candidate in English at the University of Aberdeen where she researches religion, women’s writing, and the environment. She calls everywhere home.