New Poem from Black Swift Press Author B. L. Bruce, "Yellow," in Honor of #NationalPoetryDay

YELLOW
 

What I can’t forget is the sound
of that yellow warbler. Up and up
we climbed Wasatch Mountain,
poolings of snow lingering
in the shadowed valleys.
In the quiet along the riverbank
we did not speak.

Cupping our hands,
drinking the sweet alpine snowmelt,
the wind slipped through poplars,
and that warbler song echoed in the canyon.

Years later, I still hear it, that colorful sound,
and think of that day upstream,
those chalk-white poplars,
high mountain wind.

c. 2017, B. L. Bruce

Award-winning author of The Weight of Snow and The Starling's Song

2014 International Book Awards Finalist in the Poetry Category
2014 San Francisco Book Festival Honorable Mention Recipient in the Poetry Category
2014 USA Best Books Awards Finalist in "Poetry" Category
2017 Pacific Rim Book Festival Award Honorable Mention (Poetry Category)

‘THE STARLING’S SONG’ WINS HONORABLE MENTION IN THE 2017 PACIFIC RIM BOOK FESTIVAL

HOLLYWOOD, CA – July 24th, 2017 – Award-winning poet B. L. Bruce’s third book, The Starling’s Song, has received Honorable Mention in the poetry category of the 2017 Pacific Rim Book Festival, honoring the best books of the spring.

This award will be added among others the author has received, including Finalist in the 2014 International Book Awards and Finalist in the USA Book Awards in the poetry category for her debut collection of poetry titled The Weight of Snow, which recently was re-released as a second edition under Black Swift Press (June, 2017).

The Starling’s Song was written entirely during a four-week-long stay in a rustic cabin in the remote forests of Northern California, where this unique backdrop guided much of her work in this collection.

Heralded as the “daughter of California’s wild places” by Mendocino Coast Writer’s Conference executive director and author Karen Lewis, Bruce’s work continues to inspire nature-mindedness in readers and bestow them with her known lyricism and image-centric verse.

Her newest collection of poetry is set to be released late summer of 2017.

CAPTURING CALIFORNIA’S COAST: SANTA CRUZ POET LAUNCHES DEBUT POETRY COLLECTION

“Alive with style and filled with beautiful, nostalgic imagery. Bruce’s free verse poetry is rich with detail, and her evocative language will stay with you long after reading this collection. Deeply introspective and profoundly insightful, each poems displays great thematic range and literary sensibility.”   - J. Rodriguez, Film Producer and Artist

“Haunting and provocative wile simple and natural. [The author’s] amazing gift of poetic writing and presentation cannot be missed.”   - Linda Harper, Author

SANTA CRUZ, CALIFORNIA, January 27th — Local author and freelance editor Bri Bruce of Santa Cruz will release her debut collection of poems The Weight of Snow: New & Selected Poems on February 1, 2014 as the first work of Black Swift Press’s California Writers assemblage. She is planning a book launch party this spring that will include other local authors, artists, and creative minds.

Bruce, a freelance editor, graphic designer, photographer, and graduate of UC Santa Cruz’s literature department, has been working toward publishing her first collection of poetry for five years. Her work has appeared in dozens of magazines and literary publications, including Santa Cruz’s phren-Z and The Monterey Poetry Review. Last winter she was bestowed with the opportunity to read her work at the Museum of Art History in downtown Santa Cruz and was chosen for the Centrum Foundation’s writer’s residency. In addition, she is the owner of Bri Bruce Productions, a writing, editing, and graphic design company based out of the Santa Cruz Mountains.

San Francisco author and publisher Kermit Heartsong calls Bruce’s work, “Evocative, powerful, and transporting,” and the collection as a whole is “a poignant and beautiful story of a life, experiences, memories, and pain. Ms. Bruce is truly a gifted poet.”

Written in the vein of Mary Oliver, May Sarton, and the late Santa Cruz poet Maude Meehan, Bruce’s poems are inspired by California’s breathtaking Pacific coast and inland coastal regions. In her collection, she explores the many plights of the human species, from the mysteries of the heart and the inescapability of death, to the depths of human emotion. Told from the perspective of a poetic naturalist, Bruce shares her appreciation of the wild, illuminating the profound in the mundane while chronicling the natural world as both an observer and an irrefutable part of it. Her poems focus strongly on image and locality, conjuring the imaginations of readers and celebrating the beauty in the follies of the human condition.

Bruce is available for interviews and appearances. For booking presentations, media appearances, interviews, and/or book-signings contact bribruceproductions@gmail.com