Bicycle Lotus

"Backer is within and without tradition, conversing with William Carlos Williams, Coyote, and prison inmates, and saying nothing that all of them can’t understand." -Eric Paul Shaffer, author of Lahaina Noon

There are no observers in the food chain. Like it or not, we're in nature and nature is in us. So, what do we do about that? In this hybrid collection of poetry and short essays presented as a chronological narrative, Sara Backer explores the choices we make to embrace and reject the wild world. Backer shows us this is not easy, and when insight arrives, awareness becomes a demanding and never-ending job. If you pay close attention, though, the rewards are spectacular.

This chapbook won the 2015 Turtle Island Poetry Award. According to Turtle Island editor Jared Smith, "This is what a chapbook should be all about—a precise and mind expanding voyage into a state of mind that could not be entered into through a longer work—and yet contains more than any work of similar size possibly could."

Sara Backer has climbed Mt. Fuji at night, swum among dolphins off the coast of Costa Rica, sung on street corners in Vienna, run for State Representative, and published a novel (American Fuji). She currently writes short fiction and poetry in the woods of New Hampshire, teaches at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, and leads reading groups in a men’s prison. Her writing has been honored with fellowships from the Djerassi Resident Artist Program and Norton Island Residency Program. Her work has appeared in numerous journals including Poetry, Carve, Poetry Northwest, Seattle Review, Slant, Southern Poetry Review, Gargoyle, The Pedestal Magazine, and So to Speak as well as international journals such as Arc Poetry Magazine (Canada), The Rialto (UK), Allegro (UK), Hermes Poetry Journal (UK), New Welsh Reader (UK), and Crannóg (Ireland). For more information, visit her web site: sarabacker.com.