WORD Presents The Long Devotion

The Long Devotion is a collection of poems, essays, and writing prompts that celebrates motherhood and creates a space, as poet Molly Spencer has written, to "tell an unlovely truth about family life and not have to take it back."

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About the Book

The poets in this book represent and describe a wide range of experiences. They write about encountering the world anew through their children; intersections of parenting and race; single parenting; adoptive, foster, and step-parenting; life with chronic illness, mental illness, and disability; and the choice to remain childless. The book is divided into four parts. "Difficulty, Ambivalence, and Joy" considers the wonder and challenges of parenting-including infertility, pregnancy, miscarriage, and life with children-and trying to write in the midst of those demands. "The Body and the Brain" explores the cerebral and bodily labor of caregiving and writing. "In the World" brings parents and their children into contact with the natural and political landscape. Finally, "Transitions" looks at how parenting and writing change as children grow up. Poems range from linear narratives and imagistic lyric to poetry comics, speculative futures, and experimental forms. Essays and poems suggest ways to write through the disruptions and chaos of family life. Prompts invite readers to use the work in this book as a starting point for their own poetry.

As candid accounts of motherhood become more prevalent across literary, pop culture, and digital spaces, the way we talk about writing and mothering is changing. Poets have long challenged traditional motherhood narratives. This book brings together a new generation of exciting and provocative voices for the first time.

About the Editors

Emily Pérez is the author of What Flies Want, winner of the Iowa Prize; House of Sugar, House of Stone; and two chapbooks. She is co-editor of the anthology The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood. A CantoMundo fellow and Ledbury Critic, she is a high school teacher in Denver, where she lives with her family.

Nancy Reddy is the author of Pocket Universe (LSU, 2022); Double Jinx (Milkweed Editions, 2015), a 2014 winner of the National Poetry Series; and Acadiana (Black Lawrence Press, 2018). With Emily Pérez, she’s co-editor of The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood (UGA, 2022). She teaches writing at Stockton University and lives in New Jersey.

Featured poets

Sherine Gilmour graduated with an MFA in poetry from New York University. She received a special mention in Pushcart 2022, and her poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from Cleaver, The Indianapolis Review, Jet Fuel Review, Rogue Agent, Salamander, and other publications.

Eugenia Leigh is the Korean American author of Blood, Sparrows and Sparrows (Four Way Books, 2014). Her second book, Bianca, is forthcoming in March 2023. Poems from Bianca were awarded Poetry magazine's 2021 Bess Hokin Prize and have appeared in Ploughshares, The Nation, Waxwing, and elsewhere. Eugenia serves as a poetry editor at The Adroit Journal.

Lynn Melnick is the author of the poetry collections Refusenik, Landscape with Sex and Violence, and If I Should Say I Have Hope, all with YesYes Books. Her memoir, I’ve Had to Think Up a Way to Survive: On Trauma, Persistence, and Dolly Parton, is forthcoming from University of Texas Press in October.