I am both excited and proud to let you all know about the rise of a gifted young literary talent, a student in my writing class, a writer, photographer, poet and painter named Jackie Thorne, she lives in Harford, New York and she has just published her first book “Gone To Ground: Selected Poems And Essays.”
Jackie is one of the most gifted and intuitive writers I have encountered and her new book has just gone on sale on Amazon and at selected bookstores.
She will be reading from her book at the Bedlam Farm Open House and will also do some readings throughout the Northeast.
Apart from her many creative gifts, Jackie speaks to the new remarkable opportunities open to the young writer today, even during a time of great change in publishing. She is using her popular new blog creativejourneywoman.com to publish her poems and essays and photographs and share her life and her work.
Writers frequently lament the difficulties of getting published in todays’ market, but the truth is, writing is flourishing as never before, and brave and determined writers like Jackie Thorne are finding exciting ways to get their work out. Gone To Ground is a wonderful launching pad for Jackie Thorne.
It is first rate, beginning to end, the rise of a new voice worth paying attention to.
In “Gone To Ground,” Jackie writes in a beautiful, haunting and very accessible way about her love of the natural world and her powerful connection to the animal world and the earth.
“Weathered stones
rough in my palm,
scrape and peel,
carving their way,
down to my bones,
stiff thorns break
my thin pale skin
blood flows, ready
to meet the air,
kiss the ground,
silken soil slides
through my fingers,
under my nails,
down to the quick,
never to come out.”
These, the first two verses of “Gone To Ground,” the title work.
I loved her essay on a local Tractor Parade, and how it spoke to magic and disappointment, and of farming and agriculture.
The parade was rained on, but not, she writes ,a tragedy: “…the whole evening turned out to be not what I expected. It didn’t start out that way, with my Christmas grumpy pants pulled up high, and it didn’t end that way for me, either. Between the rainbow of lights and roaring tractor engines, the rain and the wind, and the conversation with my friend on our walk home, the memory, I know, will stay with me.”
Me too.
Jackie is the real deal, her book contains some of her lovely photographs, is 71 pages long, and costs $14.95. I recommend it highly, for anyone who loves animals, nature, farming and rural life. It is a treasure.
And this, from her poem “Wet Dog.”
“wet dog, happy
in the sun
fresh from swimming in the pond,
shakes herself,
and smiles at me”
I hope you will take a look at it and support it if you can. You can take a look at Gone To Ground here.
I have the greatest respect for Jackie and her work. She is the real deal, her writing is wise, poignant, and at times, elegaic. I am grateful to have her as a student and to read her beautiful writing.
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Jackie Thorne will be reading from “Gone To Ground” at 4 p.m., Saturday, June 25, at Battenkill Books, Cambridge, N.Y.