Drone String: Poems

Poet and musician Sherry Cook Stanforth�s long-awaited first collection of poems is as haunting and resonant as the sound of the drone string itself. The sustaining heart of these poems is family in its varied forms�root and branch and the song of wind rustling leaves�rendered always with the poet�s keen ear for language, eye for nuance and awareness of the world around her. Stanforth, too, does not shy away from poetry as exploration of self as she considers her place among�and beyond�the people and land that helped form her. ��She wonders who/once stood where she now stands,� Stanforth writes in the book�s opening poem. Drone String is both question and answer, not only to �who once stood� but to who stands now and tells the story that �tells itself again: a steel-spined/woman living in a green land.� ~Pauletta Hansel, author of Tangle and The Lives We Live in Houses.

Sherry Cook Stanforth is a native of Clermont County, Ohio. She grew up in a circle of traditional Appalachian musicians who played dulcimers, guitars, fiddles, banjos and mandolins late into the night. Her singing, flute, tin whistle and harmonica styles were inspired by these old time jammers of her childhood. Over the years, she has performed regionally with Sunset Dawn and Tellico, a three-generation family band named for her father�s Tellico Plains Cherokee ancestry. �Of all the venues I play, the Fraley Festival of Traditional Music at Carter Caves, Kentucky, and my own back porch overlooking the Ohio River bring the most joy.� Two of her recordings, From One Time to Another and Stone Soup (Madison Park Productions), feature a mix of traditional Appalachian songs and original ballads. In the previous century, she also recorded an original folk rock collection, It�s Only September (Carver Studio).



As founder and director of Thomas More College�s Creative Writing Vision Program she promotes regional authors, providing high-energy, interactive literary arts events for underserved populations in the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky community. She teaches fiction, poetry, environmental and ethnic literatures, and folklore. Often, she collaborates with TMC students to provide school and public events that blend creative writing with music and the natural world. Currently, she serves as co-editor for Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, the literary journal of the Southern Appalachian Writers Cooperative, and as faculty advisor for Words, the campus literary magazine.

Drone String is her first poetry collection, with other work appearing in various journals, anthologies, and NCTE books. She enjoys keeping bees, hiking mountains, and studying native plants. With her husband, David, she also raises four children, two trusty hound dogs and a garden.

Sherry Cook Stanforth is a poet, singer, and musician often playing with her family band in the folk tradition. She teaches at St. Thomas Moore College.