Library Partners Press presents ... LET GO OR HOLD FAST: BEAUFORT POEMS by Susan Schmidt

The inaugural Gail O'Day Poetry Award goes to Susan Schmidt's LET GO OR HOLD FAST.

WINSTON-SALEM, NORTH CAROLINA, US, December 5, 2018 /EINPresswire.com/ -- In her latest collection of poems, entitled LET GO OR HOLD FAST, Susan Schmidt reveals all: how to live well -- or at least well enough -- in a small town, surrounded by nutty neighbors, serious storms, coastal creatures, climate change, and, without putting too fine a point on it, existential dread.

Here's a taste of the latter:

HOW HIGH ARE YOU?

My friend Bev who lives in Montana
at five thousand feet asks me, “How much
longer are you going to live there?”
Where else, I ask, can I play in boats
year round? Cleanest air in the world,
and lots of air when the wind blows.
She means sea-level rise, being at risk
in the path of hurricanes that ride
the Gulf Stream, and state legislature
elected by gerrymandering hell-bent
to gut environmental protection.

From Terry Joyce, ocean-current scientist
at Woods Hole, I learn the AMOC,
conveyor belt that carries cold water south
and warm water north, is slowing,
which will speed climate change.

Terry lives uphill on Cape Cod
thirty feet above sea level.
He asks me, “How high do you live?”
“Nine feet.”
“Not good,” Terry blurts.
“How bad—How soon?” I ask.
“When the Greenland Ice Sheet slides off,
sea level will rise thirty feet.”
“How fast?” I fret.

Just fretting about it is one thing, but writing it all down is another, and in so doing Dr. Schmidt has earned yet another accolade in her long career with this book: the inaugural GAIL O'DAY POETRY AWARD, celebrating the best of the best poetry of the year.

The author is appearing at readings throughout Carteret County, and signing books. The book is available at finer online bookstores everywhere.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
As developmental editor, SUSAN SCHMIDT polishes science and history books, novels, and memoirs—listed among Top Ten Editors in New England. She has been a professor of literature and environmental decision-making, and a government science-policy analyst. She has had a Coast Guard Captain’s license thirty-six years. She wrote the grant to buy Carrot Island and Bird Shoal in Beaufort for the NC Estuarine Reserve. She has a doctorate in American literature and Masters degrees in Environmental Sciences and British lit. She read literature at Oxford and, postdoc, studied bioethics and environmental mediation. To witness natural diversity, she walked the Camino de Santiago, Cornwall Coastal Path, Scottish Highlands, Ireland’s Ring of Kerry, Snowdonia in Wales, Guernsey and Brittany, and the Appalachian Trail. She surveyed birds in Kenya, Ecuador, Belize, and Iceland; paddled Alaska’s Prince William Sound and New Zealand’s Milford Sound; and delivered sailboats to the West Indies. Her homeplace is the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia, and her homeport is Beaufort, North Carolina, where she walks beaches with her Boykin Spaniel. Her poems won the Guy Owen Poetry Prize and appear in Literary Trails of Eastern North Carolina; two poems were finalists for the James Applewhite Prize. She wrote Landfall Along the Chesapeake, In the Wake of Captain John Smith, an ecological history and boat adventure; Song of Moving Water, a novel about a young woman who organizes her community to oppose a dam; and Salt Runs in My Blood, poems about fish, birds, playing in boats, and walking long trails.

ABOUT LIBRARY PARTNERS PRESS
Library Partners Press, a digital imprint of Wake Forest University specializing in niche non-fiction (including creative non-fiction) titles, publishes quality books (of any length and size, in both electronic and print-on-demand formats) created by Wake Forest University and North Carolina library patrons and friends.
LPP routinely selects and publishes the best book proposals, and renders the content as widely distributable POD and/or e-texts.

ABOUT THE GAIL O'DAY POETRY AWARD
The Gail O'Day Award for Poetry recognizes outstanding achievements in poetry. Dr. O'Day served as Dean of the Wake Forest University School of Divinity from 2010 until 2018 and prepared religious leaders to teach, preach, and make a positive, enduring difference in congregations, schools, and communities -- establishing innovative programming and strengthening the School’s identity as a place where students are equipped to be agents of justice, compassion and reconciliation in congregations and other ministry settings. Throughout her career, Gail O'Day relied on poetry -- individual poems and collections alike -- to guide her teaching, sermons, and reading life.

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