Praise for Telling Tales of Dusk

“In her poems, Terri Kirby Erickson sketches vivid and appealing word pictures that lodge in the reader's mind. I rarely see the wildflower Queen Anne's lace in a field without remembering how she contrasts the plant's delicate beauty with its common surroundings. It "dandies up a ditch," she concludes. So true—and thinking about it that way makes me smile.”

— Judy Lowe, The Christian Science Monitor

“Whether writing about butter mints, the daisy chain of a group of daughters locked arm in arm, or a man burying his dead wife, Terri Kirby Erickson's poems have the characteristics we all strive for in our poetry.  These lyrical narratives are sensuous, tender, evocative, and familiar, bringing to life things we've all noticed but lacked the wisdom to put into words.”

— Scott Owens, editor of The Wild Goose Poetry Review

“Coupling the candor and aplomb of Olds with the more profound and lyrical of Lux, Terri Kirby Erickson proves an exciting new voice in American poetry. Her subject matter spans the width between a lone Ferris wheel at a county fair, where ‘Coal dust fine and black as pulverized midnight,/covers everything for miles,’ to the vagaries of aging in the face of youth, when the speaker used to jump ‘out of bed, sleek as an otter,/sliding down the day.’ Erickson’s verse is filled with spot-on similes and metaphors, dotting its distinct and lucid structure with apt and artful alliteration, telegraphing image upon finer image to the nexus of who we are.” 

— Jubal Tiner, editor of Pisgah Review and author of The Waterhouse

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