Nomadic Foundations

by Sandra Meek

Book by Sandra Meek

80 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2002

About the author

Sandra Meek was born in Texas, grew up in Fort Collins, Colorado, and has lived in Rome, Georgia, since 1996. Her most recent book of poems, Still (Persea Books, 2020), was named a “New & Noteworthy Poetry Book” by The New York Times Book Review. Of Still, The New York Times writes: “Meek’s prescient poetry has long dwelled darkly on humanity’s environmental impact; in this book, the tone has grown urgent, even apocalyptic.” Her seventh collection, Bind, is forthcoming from Persea Books in January 2027. Other titles include An Ecology of Elsewhere (Persea, 2016), Road Scatter (Persea, 2012), and Biogeography, winner of the Dorset Prize (Tupelo 2008), as well as an edited anthology, Deep Travel: Contemporary American Poets Abroad, awarded an Independent Publisher Book Award Gold Medal. Recipient of an NEA Fellowship in Poetry, the Poetry Society of America’s Lucille Medwick Memorial Award, three Georgia Author of the Year awards, and two Peace Corps Writers awards (Meek served in Manyana, Botswana, 1989-1991), she is Poetry Editor of the Phi Kappa Phi Forum and Dana Professor of English, Rhetoric, and Writing at Berry College.

Reviews

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I tended to gravitate toward the poems in the collection that were more narrative, less impressionistic. Two poems I'll certainly return to: "Refugee," for the striking turn it takes and the way the speaker implicates herself for wanting to retain a kind of romanticized, distant view of violence; and "The Library," for how it draws on various other sources (including Marianne Moore's "The Pangolin" and what appear to be instructions from a severe schoolmaster) to suggest how violence and the abuse of power can become seductive.