Ambergris

In her third collection of poems, Amy Dryansky explores illness, family, motherhood, and the natural world. Dryansky zeroes in on our shared "creative project"- the continual making, re-making and unmaking we're engaged in as we reckon with our past, present and future. What do we do with what we're given? How do we respond when what we're given isn't what we want or think we can manage? These poems have honesty and grit, bite and sting, but they have beauty, too, and always, always, the glimmer of possibility.Amy Dryansky's has two previous collections. Her first, How I Got Lost So Close to Home, won the Kinereth Gensler Award from Alice James Books, the second, Grass Whistle (Salmon Poetry) received the Massachusetts Book Award. A former poet laureate of Northampton, MA, she also received honors from the Poetry Society of America, MacDowell, Massachusetts Cultural Council and Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. She lives in rural western Massachusetts, parents two children, and cared for her partner, who had ALS, for several years until his passing. She has written extensively about that experience and is developing community-based workshops for caregivers and grievers.