Thursday, September 27, 2018

Susan F. Glassmeyer is Named Ohio Poet of the Year


Susan F. Glassmeyer has been imagining poems since childhood when her Kentucky Grandfather explained the language and meaning of train whistles. HER AWARD-WINNING BOOK OF POETRY "Invisible Fish" is a poetic chronicle from girlhood to post-middle age.

In a Michigan schoolhouse, a young nun woke her up to the rich world of storytelling. And in Ohio, a wise art teacher taught her how to see. Susan paid attention, took notes, whittled poems out of paragraphs, and along the way came to understand these things are inseparable from the life of her body. In addition to her first full-length collection, Invisible Fish (Dos Madres Press, 2018), publications include two chapbooks: Body Matters (Pudding House Publications, 2010) and Cook’s Luck (Finishing Line Press, 2012). Individual poems have found homes in these and other journals: Rattle, Naugatuck River Review, Sixfold, Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel, Dunes Review, The GHAZAL Page, Gratefulness.Org, and Ohio Poetry Association anthologies.

Reading thousands of poems and studying the lives and practices of hundreds of poets has been key to Susan’s education. In a decade-long project, she created “April Gifts” for National Poetry Month, sharing with readers her annotated presentations of select poems by 300 poets who have inspired her. Susan is a longtime member of the Greater Cincinnati Writers League. She serves as co-director of the Holistic Health Center of Cincinnati where she works as a somatic therapist and Feldenkrais® practitioner, helping people restore the poetry of presence and movement in their lives and bodies.

Learn more about her work at: https://www.susanglassmeyer.com/
                                                                       

Invisible Fish is a poetic chronicle from girlhood to post-middle age by Midwestern author and somatic therapist, Susan F. Glassmeyer. These compelling lyrics and merciful narratives do not shy away from suffering or death, nor from what is poignant and joyful. The whole realm of the visible—the world as it is—is held together by what we cannot see. Because the poems in this full-length collection are grounded in the sensory life of "the body", they ring true to the reader, inviting mindfulness and evoking curiosity and reverence for what is invisible.