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A Time for Winter
There is a time and purpose for every season. Seasons can force us to confront the dark things inside us, to feel the hurt. Seasons can call on us to shed what no longer serves, to burn so that we can rise up. Seasons can nurture us into blossoming, opening up our hearts to love, growth, and possibility. But first, there is a time for winter. A time to sit in stillness with the newly bare self. A time for sweeping away the ashes. A time for self care and healing.
A Time for Winter takes you on one poet's journey through her own hard seasons. Feeling the hurt and dead weight of anxiety, depression, and regret over a past long gone by going inward and pulling it all up to the surface before letting it go so that the real work can begin: stillness, self care, healing. My journey toward healing was powered by writing, yoga, therapy, rooting down into the earth, and reaching up toward the lights of our universe. I am still healing. I am learning to love and care for myself. I am planting the seeds for my blossoming. I am in the winter of my youth.
A Time for Winter takes you on one poet's journey through her own hard seasons. Feeling the hurt and dead weight of anxiety, depression, and regret over a past long gone by going inward and pulling it all up to the surface before letting it go so that the real work can begin: stillness, self care, healing. My journey toward healing was powered by writing, yoga, therapy, rooting down into the earth, and reaching up toward the lights of our universe. I am still healing. I am learning to love and care for myself. I am planting the seeds for my blossoming. I am in the winter of my youth.
- GenresPoetry
127 pages, Paperback
Published February 21, 2019
4 people are currently reading
13 people want to read
About the author
Kait Quinn
10 books33 followersKait Quinn (she/her) was born with salt in her wounds. She flushes the sting of living by writing poetry. Her work has been published in Reed Magazine, Watershed Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, Chestnut Review, and elsewhere. She is the winner of the League of MN Poets' 2022 John Calvin Rezmerski Memorial Grand Prize and was a Tupelo Press 30/30 Project Poet in October 2022.
She earned her BA in English Writing from St. Edward's University in Austin, TX and has continued her poetry education through courses and workshops such as Megan Falley's "Poems That Don't Suck" and Carrie Fountain's "Leap & Practice."
Kait's poetry touches on such topics as depression, anxiety, relationships, heartbreak, self-care, and healing. She often weaves nature into her poems and loves creating intricate, visceral imagery that hits readers in all the senses.
When she's not writing, you can find Kait reading under a weighted blanket, frequenting local coffee shops, eating vegan breakfasts foods, and turning her bathroom into an alternative universe where she is a professional singer. She lives in Minneapolis with her partner, their regal cat, and their very polite Aussie mix.
She earned her BA in English Writing from St. Edward's University in Austin, TX and has continued her poetry education through courses and workshops such as Megan Falley's "Poems That Don't Suck" and Carrie Fountain's "Leap & Practice."
Kait's poetry touches on such topics as depression, anxiety, relationships, heartbreak, self-care, and healing. She often weaves nature into her poems and loves creating intricate, visceral imagery that hits readers in all the senses.
When she's not writing, you can find Kait reading under a weighted blanket, frequenting local coffee shops, eating vegan breakfasts foods, and turning her bathroom into an alternative universe where she is a professional singer. She lives in Minneapolis with her partner, their regal cat, and their very polite Aussie mix.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
July 11, 2020
love this book so much. Kait is always one of my favorite poets! :)
October 4, 2023
The perfect poetry collection to read at the changing of seasons
April 7, 2022
“Someday
I’ll look myself in the mirror—
in the eyes, down the curves,
across the arid heart space and the bays
between my bones,
over the violet-veined skin stretched canvas tight
around them
—and know love.”
I’ll look myself in the mirror—
in the eyes, down the curves,
across the arid heart space and the bays
between my bones,
over the violet-veined skin stretched canvas tight
around them
—and know love.”
October 10, 2022
But let’s be honest, Kait Quinn is a literary genius.
June 30, 2020
Kait has written a beautiful book, full of powerful, moving poetry. I love this book, as I knew I would. I hope there is another one coming in the near future.
May 25, 2020
A Time for Winter is a journey from hurt through to healing told with the seasons. I have always admired Quinn’s manipulation of the natural world in her poetry and her debut collection is a superb example of this.
Throughout the collection, Quinn focuses on the physical and visceral to convey pervasive emptiness, loneliness and the lessons it took to love herself. In ‘Hurt’ there is a focus on salt - how it stings, its bitterness and how Quinn is certain she will find it beneath her skin, rubbed deeply into all her wounds. The extended metaphors tie into this perfectly as Quinn explores pain via the vastness and unpredictability of the sea.
‘Burn’ reveals the double-edged sword of decay; autumn features heavily and shades of grey remain between Quinn shedding her past and parts of herself. There is a dangerous warmth to letting go and forgetting - the ever constant fear you will let too much leave. But, there are glimmers of love and of a soul searching for solace.
This is where Quinn seamlessly pulls together A Time for Winter as ‘Heal’ acknolwedges the need for winter. It is the end and beginning; growth cannot occur without it. Quinn allows more love in and the repetition of previous motifs such as flowers, ice, salt and blood demonstrate the speaker’s subtle growth. These motifs which once were bound to feelings of desperation and loss, morph into vessels for hope. This is a result of Quinn’s craft - her nuanced understanding of progression and structure.
That said, A Time for Winter is also a collection to revisit, one poem at a time. Dipping into Quinn’s work will gift you with modernist pieces, poems brimming with soul and pieces reminiscent of Plath, Poe and Emily Brontë. Quinn owns both her darkness and recovery, and has created something truly beautiful in doing so.
Throughout the collection, Quinn focuses on the physical and visceral to convey pervasive emptiness, loneliness and the lessons it took to love herself. In ‘Hurt’ there is a focus on salt - how it stings, its bitterness and how Quinn is certain she will find it beneath her skin, rubbed deeply into all her wounds. The extended metaphors tie into this perfectly as Quinn explores pain via the vastness and unpredictability of the sea.
‘Burn’ reveals the double-edged sword of decay; autumn features heavily and shades of grey remain between Quinn shedding her past and parts of herself. There is a dangerous warmth to letting go and forgetting - the ever constant fear you will let too much leave. But, there are glimmers of love and of a soul searching for solace.
This is where Quinn seamlessly pulls together A Time for Winter as ‘Heal’ acknolwedges the need for winter. It is the end and beginning; growth cannot occur without it. Quinn allows more love in and the repetition of previous motifs such as flowers, ice, salt and blood demonstrate the speaker’s subtle growth. These motifs which once were bound to feelings of desperation and loss, morph into vessels for hope. This is a result of Quinn’s craft - her nuanced understanding of progression and structure.
That said, A Time for Winter is also a collection to revisit, one poem at a time. Dipping into Quinn’s work will gift you with modernist pieces, poems brimming with soul and pieces reminiscent of Plath, Poe and Emily Brontë. Quinn owns both her darkness and recovery, and has created something truly beautiful in doing so.
February 11, 2020
Kait Quinn’s debut poetry book, A Time for Winter, is all about acceptance. But, the journey to find it is not an easy one. The book is broken into three chapters: Hurt, Burn, and Heal. In Hurt, she writes with raw intensity that left me aching right along with her. In one my favorite pieces, ‘Ultimatum’, she acknowledges the emptiness within, and how sometimes it feels like there is nothing we can do about it. It is all or nothing, and oh how I feel that. Burn reminds us that there is often pain in the learning. I was particularly drawn to ‘Cusp’ and the way she uses nature to show that there is beauty in both the living and the dying. Lastly, we have Heal, and my absolute favorite poem, ‘Wild’. It is powerful and gripping, emotionally evocative, and I found pieces of myself in every line. With this book, Kait delves into her own inner darkness and her journey through it. But, with every poem, she also teaches the reader to walk through Winter and confront their own.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews