Praise for Like Shining From Shook Foil

“One of the great pleasures of Like Shining From Shook Foil is the opportunity to revisit these poems and find that their wisdom, beauty, and mystery is only deepened upon re-reading. Cathy Smith Bowers’ poetic gifts are immense and, as these poems show, so is her heart.” 

  — Ron Rash, author of Serena and Raising the Dead

"When I first discovered Cathy Smith Bowers’ poetry, I had not known I needed neither her spellbinding family narratives with all of their wise-telling and sinuous music nor her gorgeous and arresting lyrics which announce a remarkable vision of love, joy, loss, lament, and deeply earned peace. So powerful her ability to transform memory into worldly song, it is easy to lose sight of her ability to also portrait the natural world in acts of language that is exhilarating and alive. Put simply, I cannot imagine American poetry without her original voice nor her extraordinary imagination. How fortunate we are to have her life’s work in this singular volume." 

  — Major Jackson, author of Holding Company

About the Author

Cathy Smith Bowers served as Poet Laureate of North Carolina from 2010-2012, and in 2017 she was inducted into the South Carolina Author's Hall of Fame. She was born and reared, one of six children, in the small mill town of Lancaster, South Carolina, and received her BA and MAT in English at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina. She went on to do graduate work in Modern British Poetry at Oxford University in England. Her poems have appeared widely in publications such as The Atlantic Monthly, The Georgia Review, Poetry, The Southern Review, and The Kenyon Review. She served for many years as poet-in-residence at Queens University of Charlotte where she received the 2002 JB Fuqua Distinguished Educator Award. She now teaches in the Queens low-residency MFA program. She is the author of four collections of poetry: The Love That Ended Yesterday in Texas (Texas Tech University Press, 1992); Traveling in Time of Danger (Iris Press, 1999); A Book of Minutes (Iris Press, 2004); The Candle I Hold Up To See You (Iris Press, 2009). In 2010, to celebrate Ms. Smith Bowers' appointment as North Carolina Poet Laureate, Press 53 published, Like Shining from Shook Foil, a collection of selected works from all four previously published poetry books, as well as selections of poems previously published before her first book but not published in any of her books. In 2013, Press 53 published The Collected Poems of Cathy Smith Bowers, which contains all four of her previously published books in one volume with an introduction by former North Carolina Poet Laureate Fred Chappell. Ms. Smith Bowers' Press 53 books are published as Tom Lombardo Poetry Selections.

Other Books by this Author