Reading Wind

Third Place Winner of The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize 2023

Reading Wind is a beautiful tribute to a father, written in a daughter's favorite language-poetry. These poems celebrate the life of the author's father-a rural physician, accomplished musician, and man who was one with the earth-and take the reader on an imagery-rich journey of mourning and healing.

"From the moment we enter Barrett's Reading Wind, we are stunned into awareness of the beauty and fragility of the human and natural world."

-Judith H. Montgomery, author of Passion (Oregon Book Award for Poetry)

"In these amazing poems is an opportunity to drink into our souls the words of love for a life well lived."

-William Ellis, Ph.D., Professor of Literature and Howard Payne University President (retired)

"Reading Wind immerses readers in a delightful nexus of botany, biography, medicine, and memory."

- Annemarie E. Hamlin, Ph.D., VP for Academic Affairs, Central Oregon Community College

"Barrett's poems are pages of music, passing on to us a profound medicine of leaf, bird, heart, song."

-Thomas R. Smith, author of Medicine Year

"This is a work of discernible unity and personal truth, a journey the reader may begin gladly and finish with a sense of renewal."

-Diane Allerdyce, Professor of Humanities and author of Whatever It Is I Was Giving Up

Carol Barrett has taught Poetry and Healing courses for several universities, having earned doctorates in both Clinical Psychology and Creative Writing. She began writing poetry to support widows in counseling. Her book Calling in the Bones won the Snyder Prize from Ashland Poetry Press, following Drawing Lessons from Finishing Line Press. Carol also published creative nonfiction, Pansies, with Sonder Press, the first book in English about the Apostolic Lutheran community for outsiders.Growing up, Carol played piano and clarinet; poetry became her music after several years as a choreographer and dancer. An NEA Fellow in Poetry, she has published in a wide range of venues, including JAMA, The Women's Review of Books, Poetry International, Christian Century, and Poetry Northwest. She also has scholarship in psychology, women's studies, gerontology, education, and dance and art therapy. She recently began a program at Union Institute & University for students who are ABD, to enable completion of the Ph.D.