Cigarettes and Peppermint: A Life in Verse

by Catherine Hamilton Shaw

Catherine graduated with Bachelor's degrees in English and Psychology, and subsequently earned a Master's in Clinical Psychology. Currently, residing on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, she teaches English and serves as an activist for domestic violence and sexual assault. Catherine blends her educational and professional work of both writing and advocacy in Cigarettes and Peppermint. This poetic collection contains over 300 intimate glimpses into a woman’s emotional transcendence through life and the trauma of familial death, abusive relationships, miscarriage, and Alzheimer’s. This story evidences the essence of humanity as detailed in a variety of poetic forms, including the ode, monody, haiku, and ballad, and continuous flow of figurative language, including personification, metonymy, allusions, and metaphors.

Paperback

First published March 26, 2007