2 Forthcoming Poetry Chapbooks by Cristina M. R. Norcross and a Book Launch Party!

Amnesia and Awakenings (Forthcoming, Local Gems Press, 2016) Cover Artist: Kelsey Becker

Still Life Stories  (Forthcoming, Aldrich Press, 2016) Cover Artist: Jennifer S. J. Peña

SAVE THE DATE! Saturday, October 15th, 2016 (6:30-8:30pm) at Books and Company, 1039 Summit Ave, Oconomowoc, WI 53066 (262) 567-0106. Book launch party, poetry reading, and an open mic hour, to celebrate the publication of 2 upcoming chapbooks by Cristina M. R. Norcross: AMNESIA AND AWAKENINGS (Local Gems Press, summer, 2016) and STILL LIFE STORIES (Aldrich Press, Aug/Sept, 2016).

Please join us for a featured reading by local poet, Cristina M. R. Norcross, followed by an open mic hour (all poets welcome!). Book signing at intermission and after the readings. Copies of both books will be available at Books and Company. 

Amnesia and Awakenings by Cristina M. R. Norcross

(Forthcoming, Local Gems Press, 2016)

Cover Artist: Kelsey Becker

Amnesia and Awakenings is a collection of poems offering a guide map, through verse, for the transformation of spirit.  Some poems focus on life chapters and challenges.  Others paint a vivid picture of the changes in the natural world or the transformation of the body with age.  Every poem engages with hope, like a furtive bird singing on a branch, to no one in particular, and also to everyone.  These poems ask the reader to listen and be more tender, more patient, with the self that is emerging every day.

Back Cover Blurbs for Amnesia and Awakenings

“Cristina Norcross’s Amnesia and Awakenings is a call to be fully present in our humanness, to bear attentive witness to the numerous cycles that fill our lives. As she writes, “We may be here awhile/says the body./Take root,/grow windows/and look out.” Here too is a poet in deep engagement with the natural world. Norcross is an eager student and scholar of the animal kingdom, recognizing a metaphor for hope in a many-legged beetle, for passion in a bird’s flight. These poems are a call to a higher plane of attention, one we’d be wise to heed.” 
~Paulette Beete, author of Voice Lessons and Blues for a Pretty Girl


“Amnesia and Awakenings is one sweet read (or many)! Like a book of hymns waiting to chorus and chorus again, these are poems that beg to be reread—poems of rebirth and growth, poems that “sew things back together.” Even in moments of profound sadness, like the death of a child, we hear Norcross’s soft voice of hope, of “next time” – a boundless connectedness with the earth, the sky, each other.”
~Cathryn Cofell, author of Sister Satellite


“These poems reflect the deep sweetness of embodied awareness, of the dreams we were born to discover, and of the nourishing power of grace. Sip from them. Savor them. Be reminded of what is boundless and true.” 
~Ingrid Goff-Maidoff, author of What Holds Us, Moonlight and Remembrance, and Befriending the Soul

Still Life Stories by Cristina M. R. Norcross

(Forthcoming, Aldrich Press/Kelsay Books, 2016)

Cover Artist: Jennifer S. J. Peña

Still Life Stories (due to be published, September, 2016 by Aldrich Press) is a poetic antidote of hope and human connection, at a time when the isolation of modern living leaves us with many questions.  Still Life Stories explores the themes of family wisdom, spirit guiding us, finding the stillness within, seeking one’s artistic path and celebrating joy.  Each slice of life and snapshot of solitude offered in this collection allows the reader to pause and consider the inner life of each narrator.  The poems of Still Life Stories help bring us closer to our true nature – our true spirit.

Back Cover Blurbs for Still Life Stories

I live inside layers of color, Cristina Norcross confides in this moving collection, Still Life Stories. The title provides a double meaning – the speaker remains alive, as she contemplates the lives of others who have passed in these arresting still life images. Like the still life paintings of the 17^th century Dutch Masters, Norcross’s poems bring us into a carefully examined world where death is understood as a new aspect of life. And living fully, is what Norcross is all about.

~Susan Rich, author of Cloud Pharmacy and The Alchemist's Kitchen

With lush imagery and a tone of celebration, the poems in this collection explore our relationships: with art, with the natural world, with each other. Cristina Norcross has a gift for finding the beauty in all facets of human experience and rendering them with clarity and precision on the page. She reminds us to pay attention. She invites us to feel. Still Life Stories is eminently accessible and full of heart.

~Kim Suhr, author of Maybe I'll Learn: Snapshots of a Novice Mom and Director of Red Oak Writing

Norcross writes with the tenderness of one who knows that beauty is often born of darkness, and there are joys accessible only through sorrow.  In Still Life Stories she offers readers small, polished jewels reclaimed from loved ones who have walked on: a horse remembering its rider; a climbing friend who fell; dances with a ghostly grandfather. Though gone, her loved ones still live.  Still Life Stories also touches readers with the writer’s gentle counsel to herself: surrender; break open; feel everything; begin again. Still Life Stories is a small book of treasures.

~Leslee Goodman, Publisher/editor of The MOON Magazine

Cristina M. R. Norcross is the author of 5 poetry collections including, Land & Sea: Poetry Inspired by Art (2007) with co-author Irene Ruddock, Unsung Love Songs (2010), The Red Drum (2013), The Lava Storyteller (2013), and Living Nature’s Moments: A Conversation Between Poetry and Photography (2014) with co-author, Patricia Bashford.  Her works appear in print and online in North American and international journals, such as The Toronto Quarterly, Red Cedar, The Moon Magazine, Your Daily Poem, Lime Hawk, The Poetry Storehouse, The Avocet, Right Hand Pointing, One Sentence Poems, Verse-Virtual, and others.  Cristina’s work also appears in numerous print anthologies such as: Contemporary Women’s Literature (2007), Verse & Vision (2011, 2012), A Touch of Saccharine (2014), Sounds of Solace (2013), Twice Upon a Time (2015), An Ariel Anthology (2014, 2015), Poets4Paris (forthcoming), and Secrets and Dreams (forthcoming).  She was a semi-finalist in the 2015 Concrete Wolf Chapbook Competition and a finalist in the 2015 Five Oaks Press Chapbook Contest.  Cristina is the managing editor of the online poetry journal, Blue Heron Review.  She is one of the co-founders of Random Acts of Poetry and Art Day and a regular contributor to the Art Ambush Project.  Find out more about this author at:  www.cristinanorcross.com