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New Poets of America
An Unkindness of Ravens
In An Unkindness of Ravens , Meg Kearney's poems weave voices of estrangement and mothers, daughters, lovers of gin, and dead things. > In an attempt to create an identity―to imagine a past when all biological and genealogical ties have been severed―Kearney's poems create their own mythology in order to tell an emotional truth. A number of poems find the protagonist speaking to the character, Raven, who serves as an imaginary lover, friend, and the vehicle through which the reader identifies with the speaker's joy and angst.
- GenresPoetry
96 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
1 person is currently reading
53 people want to read
About the author
Meg Kearney
16 books16 followersMeg Kearney (pronounced “car-nee”)
Meg Kearney’s most recent collection of poems for adults is All Morning the Crows, winner of the 2020 Washington Prize, which spent 7 months of 2021 on Small Press Distribution's poetry bestseller list. Her heroic crown of sonnets, The Ice Storm, was published as a chapbook by Green Linen Press in 2020. Her collection of poems Home By Now (Four Way Books 2009) was winner of the 2010 PEN New England LL Winship Award; it was also a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize and Foreword Magazine’s Book of the Year. The title poem of Home By Now is included in Garrison Keillor’s Good Poems: American Places anthology (Viking Penguin 2011). Meg’s first collection of poetry, An Unkindness of Ravens, was published by BOA Editions Ltd. in 2001.
Meg is also author of a trilogy of novels in verse for teens—all of which come with teacher’s guides: The Secret of Me (Persea Books, 2005); The Girl in the Mirror (Persea Books, 2012); and When You Never Said Goodbye (Persea Books, 2017). Her story “Chalk” appears in Sudden Flash Youth: 65 Short Short Stories (Persea Books 2011).
Meg’s first picture book, Trouper (the three-legged dog), was published by Scholastic in November 2013 and illustrated by E.B. Lewis. Winner of the 2015 Kentucky Bluegrass Award and the Missouri Association of School Librarians’ Show Me Readers Award (Grades 1 – 3), Trouper was selected as one of the Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People of 2014; one of the most “Diverse and Impressive Picture Books of 2013” by the International Reading Association, and one of the 2013-14 season's best picture books by the Christian Science Monitor, the Cooperative Children’s Book Center, and Bank Street College of Education. It was also a 2013 Association of Children's Librarians of Northern California Distinguished Book, and a Nominee for the 2014-2015 Alabama Camellia Children’s Choice Book Award (Grades 2-3).
Former U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey chose Meg’s poem “Grackle” for the 2017 Best American Poetry anthology. Meg’s poetry has also been featured on Poetry Daily and Garrison Keillor’s “A Writer’s Almanac,” and has been published in such publications as Poetry, Agni, and The Kenyon Review. Her work also is featured in the anthologies Where Icarus Falls (Santa Barbara Review Publications, 1998), Urban Nature (Milkweed Press, 2000), Poets Grimm (Storyline Press, 2003), Never Before: Poems About First Experiences (Four Way Books, 2005), Shade (Four Way Books, 2006), The Book of Irish American Poetry from the Eighteenth Century to the Present (Notre Dame Press, 2006), Conversation Pieces: Poems That Talk to Other Poems (Knopf, Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets series, 2007); Sinatra: But Buddy, I’m a Kind of Poem (Entasis Press, 2008), The Best of the Bellevue Literary Review (Bellevue Literary Press, 2008), The Incredible Sestina Anthology (Write Bloody, 2013), and Double Kiss: Stories, Poems, & Essays on the Art of Billiards (Mammoth Books, 2017). Her nonfiction essay, “Hello, Mother, Goodbye,” appears The Movable Nest: A Mother/Daughter Companion (Helicon Nine Press in fall 2007). She is also co-editor of Blues for Bill: A Tribute to William Matthews (Akron University Press, 2005).
Meg is Founding Director of the Solstice Low-Residency Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program at Pine Manor College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. For eleven years prior to joining Pine Manor, she was Associate Director of the National Book Foundation (sponsor of the National Book Awards) in New York City. She also taught poetry at the New School University. Early in her career, she organized educational programs and conducted power plant tours for a gas & electric company in upstate New York.
In 2019, Marge Piercy chose Meg’s manuscript Bird for the Rochelle Ratner Memorial Award (a cash but not publication prize from Marsh Hawk Press). She is the recipient of an Individual Artist’s Fellowship from the New Hampshire Council on th
Meg Kearney’s most recent collection of poems for adults is All Morning the Crows, winner of the 2020 Washington Prize, which spent 7 months of 2021 on Small Press Distribution's poetry bestseller list. Her heroic crown of sonnets, The Ice Storm, was published as a chapbook by Green Linen Press in 2020. Her collection of poems Home By Now (Four Way Books 2009) was winner of the 2010 PEN New England LL Winship Award; it was also a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize and Foreword Magazine’s Book of the Year. The title poem of Home By Now is included in Garrison Keillor’s Good Poems: American Places anthology (Viking Penguin 2011). Meg’s first collection of poetry, An Unkindness of Ravens, was published by BOA Editions Ltd. in 2001.
Meg is also author of a trilogy of novels in verse for teens—all of which come with teacher’s guides: The Secret of Me (Persea Books, 2005); The Girl in the Mirror (Persea Books, 2012); and When You Never Said Goodbye (Persea Books, 2017). Her story “Chalk” appears in Sudden Flash Youth: 65 Short Short Stories (Persea Books 2011).
Meg’s first picture book, Trouper (the three-legged dog), was published by Scholastic in November 2013 and illustrated by E.B. Lewis. Winner of the 2015 Kentucky Bluegrass Award and the Missouri Association of School Librarians’ Show Me Readers Award (Grades 1 – 3), Trouper was selected as one of the Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People of 2014; one of the most “Diverse and Impressive Picture Books of 2013” by the International Reading Association, and one of the 2013-14 season's best picture books by the Christian Science Monitor, the Cooperative Children’s Book Center, and Bank Street College of Education. It was also a 2013 Association of Children's Librarians of Northern California Distinguished Book, and a Nominee for the 2014-2015 Alabama Camellia Children’s Choice Book Award (Grades 2-3).
Former U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey chose Meg’s poem “Grackle” for the 2017 Best American Poetry anthology. Meg’s poetry has also been featured on Poetry Daily and Garrison Keillor’s “A Writer’s Almanac,” and has been published in such publications as Poetry, Agni, and The Kenyon Review. Her work also is featured in the anthologies Where Icarus Falls (Santa Barbara Review Publications, 1998), Urban Nature (Milkweed Press, 2000), Poets Grimm (Storyline Press, 2003), Never Before: Poems About First Experiences (Four Way Books, 2005), Shade (Four Way Books, 2006), The Book of Irish American Poetry from the Eighteenth Century to the Present (Notre Dame Press, 2006), Conversation Pieces: Poems That Talk to Other Poems (Knopf, Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets series, 2007); Sinatra: But Buddy, I’m a Kind of Poem (Entasis Press, 2008), The Best of the Bellevue Literary Review (Bellevue Literary Press, 2008), The Incredible Sestina Anthology (Write Bloody, 2013), and Double Kiss: Stories, Poems, & Essays on the Art of Billiards (Mammoth Books, 2017). Her nonfiction essay, “Hello, Mother, Goodbye,” appears The Movable Nest: A Mother/Daughter Companion (Helicon Nine Press in fall 2007). She is also co-editor of Blues for Bill: A Tribute to William Matthews (Akron University Press, 2005).
Meg is Founding Director of the Solstice Low-Residency Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program at Pine Manor College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. For eleven years prior to joining Pine Manor, she was Associate Director of the National Book Foundation (sponsor of the National Book Awards) in New York City. She also taught poetry at the New School University. Early in her career, she organized educational programs and conducted power plant tours for a gas & electric company in upstate New York.
In 2019, Marge Piercy chose Meg’s manuscript Bird for the Rochelle Ratner Memorial Award (a cash but not publication prize from Marsh Hawk Press). She is the recipient of an Individual Artist’s Fellowship from the New Hampshire Council on th
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 29, 2018
I was in Gibson's Bookstore in Concord NH a few days ago. Because I am a cheap bastard, I often take a short book of poetry and read the whole thing for free. I saw Meg's book An Unkindness of Ravens and decided to read it. It was published in 2001 and for some reason I had never read it before. I thought it was superb. In fact, I liked it so much, I even bought it so I could read it again. Now that is saying something.
August 2, 2025
Heart-breaking yet wonderfully candid on the human condition and spirit. Such a roller-coaster of emotion throughout each piece, focusing on ethnic heritage, childhood, the transition from teen to 20 something, etc.
April 11, 2014
It isn't very often that:
I read a book of poetry in one sitting;
I want to own a copy of the said book to have, love, and will actually reread.
I find that, while the poems of the haunting raven (part two, Redemption Arcade) are a necessity to the story, I'm more drawn to those which speak more directly-- those in parts one (Unkindness Of Ravens) and three (Adoptive Measures).
I feel like this collection of poems is a cohesive story of a woman's life: abandonment of sorts by a mother fallen from grace, loss of a father, being haunted by oneself, finding someone to perhaps alter the "intent of [the raven's] blackness" and offer love and a sort of peace... but I tend to give my own slant (as all readers do) and what I see might be far from intent.
"Longing is a form of terror"... (from the first poem)
and then a later poem, the doppelgänger with her terror, her longing, "a stuffed black dog who sleeps with her in a fetal curl" has left when the door opens, to 'you'
" if only we'd stop trying to be happy/ we could have a pretty good time"
(It's late and impossible to be more coherent right now, typing from a Kindle. Maybe I will come back to this... more to add, or at least edit this so far.)
I read a book of poetry in one sitting;
I want to own a copy of the said book to have, love, and will actually reread.
I find that, while the poems of the haunting raven (part two, Redemption Arcade) are a necessity to the story, I'm more drawn to those which speak more directly-- those in parts one (Unkindness Of Ravens) and three (Adoptive Measures).
I feel like this collection of poems is a cohesive story of a woman's life: abandonment of sorts by a mother fallen from grace, loss of a father, being haunted by oneself, finding someone to perhaps alter the "intent of [the raven's] blackness" and offer love and a sort of peace... but I tend to give my own slant (as all readers do) and what I see might be far from intent.
"Longing is a form of terror"... (from the first poem)
and then a later poem, the doppelgänger with her terror, her longing, "a stuffed black dog who sleeps with her in a fetal curl" has left when the door opens, to 'you'
" if only we'd stop trying to be happy/ we could have a pretty good time"
(It's late and impossible to be more coherent right now, typing from a Kindle. Maybe I will come back to this... more to add, or at least edit this so far.)
December 9, 2008
Kearney has split herself open to write these poems and the reader feels it, blushes, almost has to look away from the page. There are two voices in this book that both work together and at odds with one another. There is the wild woman who comes “to sex as she’d come to gin,” who knows she isn’t “holy, or chaste, or/ even sorry” (“Gin,” p. 18). Then, there is another voice. It’s the voice we all push back, deep into our bellies— it’s the voice of abandonment and longing that Kearney captures so tenderly in the opening poem ("Longing") and in these lovely, wrought lines: “that ugly baby I keep/ dreaming about— she lives inside me/ opening and closing her mouth./ I believe she will never taste her/ mother’s milk…/ and if you hold/ your hand right here— touch me right/ here, as if this is all that matter,/ this is all you ever wanted, I believe/ something might move inside me,/ and it would be more than I could stand” (“Creed,” p. 73). It is this duality that makes these poems so human.
July 9, 2014
In my quest to learn to love poetry so I can share it with my students with more joy, I met Meg Kearney and heard her read aloud her poems. I had to buy the book to re-read "Creed," which gave me hope that I could write my own creed poem. The emotional juxtaposition in "An Unkindness of Ravens" makes this collection grab on and not let go. My experience with poetry has been transformed.
February 9, 2010
"baby, relax, enjoy it while you can"
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews