"Ingrid Andersson's poems are well crafted and passionate at once.
They are rooted in her family, her work as a midwife birthing babies in
a natural age-old way, her own motherhood and her travels. Her work
reveals an identification with and close observation of birds, mammals
including herself and her clients, flowers, trees, the seasons. These
poems offer both insight and joy."--Marge Piercy, author of On the Way
Out, Turn Off the Light: Poems
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A Swedish-American midwife is a Best of the Net poet and Pushcart
Prize nominee, and has released her bold, life-affirming debut poetry
collection.
"A midwife is in the thick of it, she sees it all," Jennifer Worth,
author of Call the Midwife. It is midwifing in its broadest
sense--from releasing a newborn's stuck shoulders or catching a baby in
the caul, to Socratic questioning around body autonomy, social justice
and climate sustainability. The poems are layered and bi-cultural,
rooted in contrasts between America and Sweden, as well as between
colonial/industrial and ecological/relational ways of caring for each
other and the earth. With a sense of humor, love, art and aging,
Jordemoder is a collection of midwifed hope.
Maw
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*In the middle of the night, my mother *
*would bury her face *
*in her mute, farm-woman's hands *
*between the hinged high-fidelity *
*speakers of our Zenith *
*record player, the soaring trills *
*of Verdi's dying Violetta *
*vanquishing the dark. *
*At the end of the opera, ****
*she'd raise her head, revived, *
*and I learned from the edge *
*of the living room: life *
*turns on passion, as much as breath. *
*In the middle of the afternoon, I learned ****
*not to be afraid of Virginia Woolf *
*or Hedda Gabler. And now, when *
*my child goes looking for his mother, *
*I can explain: it's in the genes, *
*or a law of nature, or some *
*all-consuming love--disappearing *
into the maw of entropy and art.
