Moons of August

Danusha Laméris, a poet and essayist, was raised in Northern California, born to a Dutch father and a Barbadian mother. Her first book, The Moons of August (2014), was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye as the winner of the Autumn House Press Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Milt Kessler Book Award. Her second book, Bonfire Opera, (University of Pittsburgh Press, Pitt Poetry Series), was a finalist for the 2021 Paterson Poetry Award and recipient of the Northern California Book Award in Poetry. She was the 2018-2020 Poet Laureate of Santa Cruz County, California, and is currently on the faculty of Pacific University’s low residency MFA program. Her third book, Blade by Blade, was published by Copper Canyon Press.

"This book of motherhood, memory, and elegiac urgency crosses borders, cultures, and languages to bring us the good news of being alive. With language clear as water and rich as blood, The Moons of August offers a human communion we can all believe in. Reckoning with and grieving for the past as they claim the future, these poems are wise, direct, and fearless. 'What’s gone / is not quite gone, but lingers,' Laméris reminds us. 'Not the language, but the bones / of the language. Not the beloved, / but the dark bed the beloved makes / inside our bodies.'" —Dorianne Laux, author of Only as the Day Is Long"Danusha Laméris writes with definitive, savoring power in perfectly well-weighted lines and scenes. Her poems strike deeply, balancing profound loss and new finding, employing a clear eye, a way of being richly alive with appetite and gusto, and a gift of distilling experience to find its shining core. Don’t miss this stunning first book." —Naomi Shihab Nye, author of The Tiny Journalist