I Walk a Frayed Tightrope Without a Safety Net

Carey Link's most recent poetry sequence, I Walk a Frayed Tightrope Without a Safety Net, a finalist in the 2019 Blue Light Press chapbook contest, is a personal, introspective exploration of the experience of living and coping with metastatic cancer. In the book, Link reflects themes of love, perseverance, and coping with mortality. In these poems Link expresses an appreciation for life, communicating to readers that they are not alone in facing adversity.

The epigraph for "My Time," final piece in I Walk a Frayed Tightrope without a Safety Net pays tribute to Walt Whitman's Song of Myself. Poems from this collection have appeared in Birmingham Poetry Review, Hospital Drive, and Poets Speaking to Poets: Echoes and Tributes.

Carey Link lives in Huntsville, Alabama. In 2008, she graduated with a B.A. in psychology from the University of Alabama, Huntsville. After developing metastatic breast cancer, she had to retire from a civil service career at Redstone Arsenal. Carey is pursing a Masters in counseling at Faulkner University. Her poems have appeared in Birmingham Poetry Review, Poem, Hospital Drive and elsewhere. Carey has three additional published poetry collections: What it Means to Climb a Tree (Finishing Line Press), Awakening to Holes in the Arc of Sun (Mule on a Ferris Wheel), and Through the Kaleidoscope (Blue Light Press).