lisa parker poet biography

short stories, nonfiction, and poetry

Lisa Parker is a native Virginian, a poet, musician, and photographer. Her book, This Gone Place , won the 2010 Appalachian Studies Association Weatherford Award and her work is widely published in literary journals and anthologies. Her photography has been on exhibit in NYC and published in several arts journals and anthologies.

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The Parting Glass: Poems

Winner of the 2021 arthur smith poetry prize, by lisa j. parker.

ISBN: 978-1-956440-16-4 paperback $19.95 ISBN: 978-1-956440-17-1 ebook $9.99

The Parting Glass , like the old Irish song, is a toast to the places and people who make up the author’s roots and base. However Appalachian at its root, it tells a universal story about what grounds and keeps us, even as we move in cities and circles far from home. At its core, this book brings the thread of downhome with its voices and song, to the cities and cultures the author moves through. The poems raise a glass to those still at the table and to those already gone, to homecomings and deployments, to the navigation of love and grief.

$ 9.99 – $ 19.95

Description

Additional information.

• Reviews (1)

W inner of the first annual Arthur Smith Poetry Prize judged by Jesse Graves.

What People are saying a about The Parting Glass :

As haunting as the Irish ballad for which it is named, The Parting Glass is a book of searing elegies and unforgettable odes to moments of joy shared in tranquil places. Whole worlds emerge and collide in these poems, experiences as rich as the black bread offered by the Ukrainian neighbor to the “Hillbilly Transplant” in New York City. Many of us from Appalachia will relate to her fish-out-of-water adventures and heartbreaks, missing family back home but also feeling the electric thrill of subway rides and all-night restaurants. Lisa J. Parker has created a deep and nuanced book that would have made the late Arthur Smith proud, and I cannot imagine a more worthy first entry for the poetry award named in his honor. I have felt tears welling in the corners of my eyes more than once when I come to the lines, “the surreality of that meager box / with its pewter top, your name punched into it.” The Parting Glass offers enormous heart and soul in the face of unbearable grief, survivable only through a sense of belonging to a place and its people and by committing to words those memories that affirm what we have lost. —Jesse Graves, author of Merciful Days and Said-Songs: Essays on Poetry and Place

Lisa Parker possesses the perceptive eye of a photographer and the truth-telling, visionary voice of poet. From the orange trumpet vines and sycamore trees of northern Virginia to the “crushed velvet walls” of the Metropolitan Opera, each precise, wondrous image in The Parting Glass transports the reader. As Parker shows us how to look at these beautiful, sometimes broken, sometimes aching landscapes, she tells an important story about the places we call home, the terrible weight of grief, and love—always love. — Carter Sickels , author of The Prettiest Star

These are poems of loss, displacement, and deep grief, yet they are shot through with light, in particular the illumination that comes with beautiful writing. There is not one wasted word in this moving, intelligent, and timely collection of poems that stand perfectly on their own yet sing even louder as an entire gathering. The Parting Glass is a marvel of a book. —Silas House, NY Times bestselling author of Lark Ascending

Lisa J. Parker’s second book of poetry reads like a personal diary written in controlled, soaring language that leaves an impact for all its emotional clear-sightedness.  Read the full review. —Claire Fullerton, for The New York Journal of Books

1 review for The Parting Glass: Poems

kpdavis – February 22, 2023

When we heard from the judges who had won the first Arthur Smith Poetry Prize we offered in 2021 there was a collective “ahhhh Lisa J. Parker!” And all around nodding of heads. She’s well respected among her peers, and rightly so. She faced some tough competition for that prize, too! AND that’s a photo she took on the cover… (artists seem to exell in more than one area around here!)

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The Parting Glass: poems Paperback – November 15, 2022

• Print length 86 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Madville Publishing LLC
• Publication date November 15, 2022
• Dimensions 6 x 0.21 x 9 inches
• ISBN-10 195644016X
• ISBN-13 978-1956440164
• See all details

Editorial Reviews

As haunting as the Irish ballad for which it is named, The Parting Glass is a book of searing elegies and unforgettable odes to moments of joy shared in tranquil places. Whole worlds emerge and collide in these poems, experiences as rich as the black bread offered by the Ukrainian neighbor to the "Hillbilly Transplant" in New York City. Many of us from Appalachia will relate to her fish-out-of-water adventures and heartbreaks, missing family back home but also feeling the electric thrill of subway rides and all-night restaurants. Lisa J. Parker has created a deep and nuanced book that would have made the late Arthur Smith proud, and I cannot imagine a more worthy first entry for the poetry award named in his honor. I have felt tears welling in the corners of my eyes more than once when I come to the lines, "the surreality of that meager box / with its pewter top, your name punched into it." The Parting Glass offers enormous heart and soul in the face of unbearable grief, survivable only through a sense of belonging to a place and its people and by committing to words those memories that affirm what we have lost.-Jesse Graves, author of Merciful Days and Said-Songs: Essays on Poetry and Place

Lisa Parker possesses the perceptive eye of a photographer and the truth-telling, visionary voice of a poet. From the orange trumpet vines and sycamore trees of northern Virginia to the "crushed velvet walls" of the Metropolitan Opera, each precise, wondrous image in The Parting Glass transports the reader. As Parker shows us how to look at these beautiful, sometimes broken, sometimes aching landscapes, she tells an important story about the places we call home, the terrible weight of grief, and love-always love.-Carter Sickels, author of The Prettiest Star

These are poems of loss, displacement, and deep grief, yet they are shot through with light, in particular the illumination that comes with beautiful writing. There is not one wasted word in this moving, intelligent, and timely collection of poems that stand perfectly on their own yet sing even louder as an entire gathering. The Parting Glass is a marvel of a book.-Silas House, New York Times bestselling author of Lark Ascending

About the Author

Product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Madville Publishing LLC (November 15, 2022)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 86 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 195644016X
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1956440164
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 4.8 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.21 x 9 inches
• #4,419 in Death, Grief & Loss Poetry (Books)
• #8,614 in Love Poems
• #10,292 in Love & Loss

About the author

Lisa j. parker.

Lisa J. Parker is a native Virginian raised in the Shenandoah Valley in a large extended Appalachian family. She comes from loggers, miners, and musicians, and grew up surrounded by the music and stories of those Buchanan County hills her family called home for generations. Parker is a poet, musician, and photographer. Her first book, This Gone Place, reissued in 2022, won the 2010 ASA Weatherford Award and her work is widely published in literary journals and anthologies. Her second poetry collection, The Parting Glass, won the 2021 Arthur Smith Poetry Prize and was published in November of 2022. Her photography has been on exhibit in NYC and published in several arts journals and anthologies. She has worked in the Department of Defense for nearly twenty years, was a first responder for fifteen, and continues to work as a volunteer disaster relief responder with Team Rubicon. Her work can be found at www.wheatpark.com.

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This gone place (paperback).

Description

Lisa Parker comes "from women whose wombs rained babies...the first generation raised outside the hollers of the Blue Ridge...walking the line between the mountains and the cities." As the speaker of the poem "Tracing" says, loading up her car to drive back to the city from her mountain homeplace, "I have known that spastic moment of pushing away all my life...," pushing away and yet always, always looking back. For Parker writes from the razor edge of double consciousness which is both the gift and curse of the true poet-she is here and not here, there and not there, fully present in every moment yet already absent, too, isolating it, knowing it, naming it. She exults in "every common, common thing," finding "beauty in the scratched neon of those hometown fair rides, Kmart parking lot full of wide-eyed children sweat-palming tickets...those nights at the water tower...how the sky appeared a deep navy, banked against those black hills and jutting rockface, the distant glow of the coke furnace like a red marble perched on nothing." This Gone Place is more than an extraordinary collection of poems; it is Lisa Parker's hard-earned, deeply felt autobiography.-Lee Smith, author of On Agate Hill and Fair and Tender Ladies

• American - General
• Subjects & Themes - Places

Still: The Journal

The Preacher's Daughter Studies Her Reflection   by Lisa Parker

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