Fire Pond

by Jessica Garratt

The Agha Shahid Ali Prize in Poetry was inaugurated in 2003 to honor the late poet, a nationally recognized writer and former professor at the University of Utah, and is sponsored by the University of Utah Press and the University of Utah Department of English. Fire Pond is the 2008 prize-winning volume selected by this year’s judge, Medbh McGuckian, poet, editor, and teacher from Belfast.

Genres: Poetry

79 pages, Paperback

First published March 31, 2009

About the author

Jessica Garratt grew up in Maryland, and has lived in Iowa, Ireland, Texas, Missouri, and elsewhere. Her book Fire Pond won the Agha Shahid Ali Prize in Poetry and was published by the University of Utah Press in 2009. Jessica earned her PhD at the University of Missouri, where she taught Literature & Creative Writing, and has also held a visiting teaching appointment at Wichita State University. She has received fellowships from the Carson McCullers Center, the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, ART342, and from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin, where she earned her MFA. Jessica's poems have appeared in journals such as Michigan Quarterly Review, Shenandoah, The Missouri Review, Literary Imagination, Western Humanities Review, Crazyhorse, Southwest Review, and other journals. She lives in Washington, DC, where she teaches classes at George Washington University and The Writer's Center, and is working on her second book of poems.

Reviews

[C · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every once in awhile, a book of poetry comes along that makes you not only fall in love with the collection, but fall headfirst into love with the poet themselves. This is one of those collections.

Honestly, every poem here is heartfelt and honest and yet so precise, so exact about these feelings that it could never be attacked as purely confessional. Everything said needs to be said and it is explained why it needs to be said. And yet, somehow, Garratt manages never to make this examination seem clinical.

Let me leave it there. Let me say simply - in a small voice - that I am beyond impressed. That I wish I could have written this book.

And thank you, Jessica, for the pleasure of reading such a fine collection. I look forward to seeing more.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

i am not an expert in poetry but jessica's poems inspire me. highly recommend her work and cant wait until her next.