Building Altars

Building Altars is a collection of original poetry that looks to the altar as a metaphor for the poetic process of veneration: of family, place and relationships, those elements of life which we no longer have except in memory---and, for the poet, in writing. The volume examines the worlds of love, loss, death and transformation within a number of contexts: Part I, Seeded and Cast, views the themes in the context of childhood and family; Part II, Our Burning Hands, looks at the transitions and changes required by love, loyalty and betrayal; Part III, Reaching for Water, explores the transformations that death and loss exact. A sense of place---in both internal and exterior landscapes---pervades the work, establishing that the interior processes we face mirror themselves in the places, literal and metaphorical, where we travel and in which we live.