My latest book, five years in the making, is out! Once: A Golden Shovel Collection is available from the publisher, Kelsay Books, on Amazon, and at the following bookstores: Bookshop West Portal (San Francisco, CA), Fireside Books (Chagrin Falls, OH), Heights Arts (Cleveland Heights, OH), Mac’s Backs (Cleveland Heights, OH), and Visible Voice (Cleveland, OH).
“The poems in Cathy Barber’s Once: A Golden Shovel Collection carry the reader seamlessly across decades—from the belonging and otherness of childhood and youth, through cancer, recovery, and home. It’s easy to lose sight of the golden shovel form in which these poems are written—just read and enjoy them.”
—Sara McAulay, author of Catch Rides and Chance
An example poem from the collection, with Issa’s haiku in bold:
Cat
after Kobayashi Issa
Who knows what goes
into a poem and what goes out,
words, spaces; a thought comes
but soon is cut back—
like running bamboo—the
scissors more important than the pen. I love
to laze in the morning, my life
composed of coffee, of granola, of
news of last night’s score, a
shoulder heavy with my fidgety cat.