About

I was born in 1955, in a New England city in the crumbling textile corridor along the Merrimack River. A place, like so much of the world today, at war with itself. I spent a big chunk of my adult life trying to get away from those roots.

I’ve lived, by choice, in California, Vermont, New York, and now Virginia. Married. Built a career. Raised my children. Watched with unbridled joy as my children launched their lives and became my friends. I traveled a good amount. The one distant place I imagine visiting again is Lalibela, Ethiopia, for its warm light, radiant people, and fabulous antiquities. But, as time gives way to a bounty of grandchildren, I probably won’t end up making the trip.

I was the first of my extended family to go to college, obtain an advanced degree, practice in one of the ancient professions.

My love for reading and writing poetry started in high school when a wonderful teacher with a passion for poetry and a passable tolerance for teenagers opened my eyes to the alliteration in the poems of Carl Sandburg and to the magical thought coursing through the lines of T. S. Eliot. I now engage in the ritual of reading Ash Wednesday each year at the start of Lent, then return to my relentless campaign against pay-to-pray religion.

I am a passionate gardener, and images from the garden abound in my poems.

My first book, Feather and Leaf, collects in one place some of the poems and photographs from five decades of my life. If I could do it again, I would have published the poems in separate books over the years when they were just new. But alas . . .

My current book, God Dammed the River, and the one before it, The Unbreakable Gift, play with themes that fascinate me: our role in creation, the follies of religion, the despicable politics of the right, the curse of labels, and the undying beauty of small moments, overlooked objects, and grand ideas.

In the end, I believe that most of us end up back where the seeds of our life were first sown. I hope you enjoy the recounting through these poems of my version of that journey. Sometimes, I like to imagine the gray light of a rainy afternoon in the not-too-distant future when my poems and my grandchildren first connect, and a bit of the unknowable past is carried, once again, for a few moments into the present.

I welcome hearing from you. I hope my work helps you in some small way on your journey to trusting yourself and becoming what you are meant to be.

— KC Lavre