August 2023, Kelsay Books

Watershed is a collection of poems about my deep connection with the Tennessee habitats of my youth, my journey toward connecting with the Virginia habitats of my adulthood, and my longing to feel connected in a world made almost completely of change. At least, those things were on my mind as I wrote. What I hope happens, as this little book emerges, is that readers bring their own experiences into the poetry and find moments of resonance.

In the poem “The Farm Daughters,” Rae Spencer writes “One spring we rescued tadpoles / from the pond’s leaking mire / / …eager for the magic / of metamorphosis.” This eagerness for transformation, this curiosity to discover the being that underlies each becoming is a thread that animates this poet’s mesmerizing collection Watershed. One gets the very clear sense of a living membrane sustaining and connecting all things, all changes, an organic yes emanating from a hearth and a storm, from rain-dampened hair, from jays and cats, from a sunlit raccoon, and from the wind guiding the poet home. With images that are both familiar and fantastical, we are invited to walk, not only a stranger’s journey but one that might be ours as well, if we dare assume the role of the penitent, among “bruised and scattered irises,” pondering, as the poet ponders, about divining and dividing, so crucial to living life.

Sofia M. Starnes, Virginia Poet Laureate, Emerita

The poems in this collection brim with beautiful sonics, marrying the energy of a lived experience with skillful wordsmithing. In the opening poem, The Fire, memory glides through the lines with a “radiant glow” that clearly evokes life-giving heat as well as danger. In the title poem, Watershed, elemental imagery weaves an essential emotional landscape out of girlhood recollections that will linger in the reader’s mind because it feels so familiar. All the poems evoke this understanding, because we are all similarly alive in joy and difficulty. At its core, this excellent collection showcases our need to create art from the ordinary because, as one poem states, “I write therefore I am.”

Christine Klocek-Lim, editor Autumn Sky Poetry DAILY

Rae Spencer’s Watershed is full of bravery, honesty, and rigor. While the poems follow clear narrative, they also sing with lyricism. In “The Farm Daughters,” tadpoles are rescued from “the pond’s leaking mire, a trio of angels in muddy brigade.” And in “Entropy,” we are privy to such brave confession: “illusions of order / I tie loose ends / trying to finish / scarves and poems / before they unravel.” In poem after poem, we learn not only about the subject but also vital truths about ourselves. As is the etymology of the word, shed, this book is a high ground between valleys. Read it. You’ll be bouyed.

Charlotte Matthews, Associate Professor, University of Virginia, Bachelor of Interdisciplinary Studies, www.charlottematthewswriter.com

To read a few of the poems in this collection, follow these links:

• The Fire, Part I at Autumn Sky Poetry DAILY
• Another Autumn at The Blue Hour
• The Tracking at vox poetica
• Metamorphosis at Poetry Breakfast
• Of Warbler and Quail at Bolts of Silk

Watershed is available in paperback and Kindle ebook formats.

Details (paperback):

• ISBN: 1639803890
• Publisher: Kelsay Books
• Publication Date: August 3, 2023
• Page count: 74 pages
• Purchase price: $20.00
• Purchase on the Kelsay Books website or at Amazon

Details (Kindle version):

• ASIN: B0CF2SGSZQ
• Publication Date: August 7, 2023
• Language: English
• File size: 1659 kB
• Page count: 70 pages
• Text-to-speech enabled
• Screen reader supported
• Enhanced typesetting enabled
• X-ray not enabled
• Word wise enabled
• Sticky notes on Kindle Scribe
• Purchase price: $9.99
• Purchase at Amazon

Reviews

• Crafty Green Poet (4 January 2024): “…Several of the poems look at growing up and ageing in both the natural world and the human. In The Cardinals, the parent birds struggle to bring up their single nestling, living life as a ‘little family of fear’ while Metamorphosis follows the increasingly perilous journey of Monarch caterpillars into becoming butterflies….” (Read the full review here.)
• North of Oxford (January 2024): “Watershed by Rae Spencer is an interesting mix of universal symbols and a pinch of mother nature’s cruelty in seventy-one pages of poems divided into three parts plus a one-poem section called Coda. Most of the poems are written in narrative voice….” (Read the full review here.)
• Verse Image (2 February 2024): “…Memory – home – loss – the path forward: Rae Spencer’s poetry has a distinctly formal feel as she settles deeply into these themes. Formal in the sense of meticulous language, lush natural imagery and description, architectural lines, internal rhyme….” (Read the full review here.)
• Tennessee Libraries (Volume 75 Issue 2, 2025): “…Readers who enjoy poems that reflect the natural beauty of the Appalachian region of northeast Tennessee/southwest Virginia will find Rae Spencer’s descriptions of the natural world absorbing. Any libraries looking to expand their collection of regional poetry would benefit from adding this title to their collection.” (Read the full review here.)

Watershed at Shepherd

My Watershed book list at Shepherd is themed “The best books that have been eddies of solace for an awkward girl who loves books and the outdoors”. While Shepherd book lists are limited to five recommendations, I could have gone on forever.

Books have been some of my most reliable companions, which is part of why I am so enthusiastic about the Shepherd format. Clicking on one of the books I recommended, I’m taken to a page of all the lists recommending that book. Book lists with titles like “The best books for communing, joyfully and respectfully, with wild animals”. And on each of these lists are four other titles that share some common point with the book I recommended. Along with a book written by the list author, who, in choosing the same book that I chose, has already demonstrated similar interests.

I find new books for my to-be-read shelf every time I visit Shepherd, often books that I would never have encountered through other channels. It’s a unique resource for writers and readers. (Hat tip to Scientist Sees Squirrel, where I first learned about Shepherd.)