Praise for A Lake of Light and Clouds

“Terri Kirby Erickson writes poetry about the real stuff, engagingly, with sympathy and an open eye." 

— Peter Tork, of blues band Shoe Suede Blues, and former member of The Monkees

"Nothing could seem more natural than enjoying Terri Kirby Erickson’s poetry, so colloquial, so every day in its subjects, and yet so penetrating. Her poems are the kind we share with special friends, and this new volume is so full of gems I’ll have plenty of gifts to go around for years to come." 

— Theodore Wiprud, composer and Director of Education, New York Philharmonic

"A Lake of Light and Clouds reaffirms that Terri Kirby Erickson has a Poet's Soul and it makes us see everyday things with new eyes and gratitude that beauty is not the exception but the rule of Life."

— Jill Conner Browne, THE Sweet Potato Queen, author of Fat Is the New 30: The Sweet Potato Queens' Guide to Coping with (The Crappy Parts of) Life

"Terri Kirby Erickson, to adapt a phrase from the epigraph by Sharon Randall in A Lake of Light and Clouds, reflects the light she has been given. A skillful poet with a compassionate heart, she is not stingy with this light. She shines it on people she sees, people like Frank and Alice or "The Man Who Cuts His Grass with Nail Scissors"; gifts from the natural world, including birds and orchids; places as varied as a Waffle House and Västerås, Sweden; material objects, including red tractors and ice cream trucks; and experiences with urologists, hospitals, and family members or friends. T.S. Eliot would call what she does mastering the objective correlative. I call it incarnating light. As Erickson shares images and experiences in her richly textured poems, she invites her readers into her own psyche, a place where we are all likely to feel accepted and warm." 

—Felicia Mitchell, author of The Cleft of the Rock

About the Author

Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of five full-length collections of award-winning poetry. Her work has appeared in the 2013 Poet’s Market, Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry, Asheville Poetry Review,Atlanta Review, Boston Literary Magazine, Christian Science Monitor, Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts, Journal of the America Medical Association, Literary Mama, NASA News & Notes, North Carolina Literary Review, storySouth, The Southern Poetry Anthology (Texas Review Press), The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor, Verse Daily, and many others. Awards include the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, Nazim Hikmet Poetry Award, Atlanta Review International Publication Prize, Gold Medal in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards, and a Nautilus Silver Book Award. She lives in North Carolina.

Other Books by this Author