Climbing the Fire Escape, Flipping the Raft: Poems on Women in Movies

These award-winning poems contemplate and celebrate a range of strong, resilient women characters in eighteen movies ranging from classic blockbusters to quiet indie films, from thrillers to comedies to historical dramas. Written during the COVID pandemic when millions of people watched movies at home instead of at theaters, each poem is dedicated to the movie's starring actress-Meryl Streep, Jodie Foster, Helen Mirren, Viola Davis, Penelope Cruz and others-and each poem accentuates the bold actions necessary for women old and young to triumph over tough times, bad guys, and assorted monsters. Author Kathleen McClung "may be the finest poet writing in form today," says novelist and poet Jim Daniels, and this book, her sixth, sparkles with sonnets, villanelles, sestinas, pantoums, and other traditional verse forms. Climbing the Fire Escape, Flipping the Raft: Poems on Women in Movies makes a great gift for movie buffs, poetry lovers, and anyone inspired by courageous women.

Kathleen McClung is the author of five poetry collections: Questions of Buoyancy, A Juror Must Fold in on Herself, winner of the 2020 Rattle Chapbook Prize, Temporary Kin, The Typists Play Monopoly and Almost the Rowboat. She co-authored with Mary Kennedy Eastham and Eileen Malone Three Soul-Makers: Poems That Bring Us Together. Winner of the Morton Marr, Maria W. Faust, and Rita Dove national poetry prizes, her work appears in a variety of journals and anthologies. A 2024 finalist for San Francisco Poet Laureate, she served from 2021-23 as guest editor for The MacGuffin, a print literary journal based in Michigan. She also served as associate director of the Soul-Making Keats literary competition and judged the contest's sonnet category. In 2018-2019 she was a writer-in-residence at Friends of the San Francisco Public Library. Kathleen teaches literature and writing classes at Skyline College in San Bruno and directed the Women on Writing conference there for ten years. She also teaches privately and at Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) in San Francisco. Visit her website at www.kathleenmcclung.com