Good grief: the poetry of loss and love

Poet Emily Ransdell writes poems of celebration and grief — the extraordinary moments of ordinary life viewed through the twin lenses of loss and long love. She will read from her debut collection, “One Finch Singing” at Manzanita’s Hoffman Center for the Arts this Sunday, June 18.

“To grieve for anyone is to grieve for everyone,” wrote Ransdell in her debut collection, an exploration of personal loss against a backdrop of the larger losses of our time. Her home is the Pacific Northwest — its beauty and fragility both loom large, even in poems that confront pandemic isolation, illness and the deaths of loved ones. These are poems that remind us that to be alive in this moment is to be aware of loss. Yet “One Finch Singing” is not a book of sorrows. It is a collection that looks back in grief and forward in hope.

Andrea Hollander, author of “Blue Mistaken for Sky,” called the book “an exquisite debut volume of poems.”

Ransdell’s poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest, Poet Lore, Tar River Poetry, Terrain and elsewhere. She has been a finalist for the Rattle Poetry Prize and the New Millennium Writing Award, and was runner-up for the Prime Number Poetry Prize from Press 53 as well as the New Letters Poetry Prize. She divides her time between Camas, Washington and Manzanita, where she has taught poetry classes at the Hoffman Center for the Arts.

Sunday’s event begins at 4 pm at the Hoffman Gallery, located at 594 Laneda Avenue in Manzanita. Pre-registration is requested. For more information go to hoffmanarts.org or call 503-368-3846.