Exciting News for In The Willing Dirt

March 24, 2023 By

Congratulations!

Purple Passion Press is pleased to announce recognition awarded to In The Willing Dirt, a chapbook of poetry by Jade Bradbury.

 

San Francisco Book Festival

In the Willing Dirt is recognized as a 2021 San Francisco Book Festival Honorable Mention in the Poetry Category. The San Francisco Book Festival celebrates the best books of the year. The prize is awarded in 19 categories.

 

The Whirling Prize

In the Willing Dirt is recognized as a 2021 Whirling Prize Finalist.

The Whirling Prize is organized by Etchings Press, a student-run publisher at University of Indianapolis. The prize is awarded each fall to two books that demonstrate an excellent and compelling response to a theme that students at the university select. In 2021 the theme was Nature.

 

Chapbook by Jade Bradbury

 

The poems gathered in this chapbook were written over a recent six-year period during which the poet consulted with the “home” elements of earth, wind, fire, and water, calling on them to guide her poetic rendering of what genuinely matters, no matter what. What emerges from what she calls the willing dirt is a living testimony on behalf of a life lived passionately in love with the natural world while attempting to make peace with a material world much in need of it.

Congratulations to Jade Bradbury. In the Willing Dirt is available in paperback at Amazon at Barnes and Noble, and other booksellers. The chapbook can also be ordered from booksellers using the ISBN number.

ISBN:  9 781733 126007

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In the Willing Dirt

July 8, 2019 By

Announcing our first chapbook, In the Willing Dirt by Jade Bradbury…

Chapbook

Sometimes it takes a good fright to shake us out of our customary zone. Faced with serious illness, the lifelong poet, Jade Bradbury, who’d worked as educator, print journalist, network television story editor, museum curator, writer, and community arts advocate returned to her roots. The poems gathered in this chapbook were written over a recent six-year period during which she consulted with the “home” elements of earth, wind, fire, and water, calling on them to guide her poetic rendering of what genuinely matters, no matter what. What emerges from what she calls the willing dirt is a living testimony on behalf of a life lived passionately in love with the natural world while attempting to make peace with a material world much in need of it.

Edited by Erica Goss

“It gives me great pleasure to introduce this book. Jade Bradbury, friend and fellow poet, has written a work of grace and insight. I witnessed some of these poems come to life, from idea to draft to finished work, and I’m happy to see them assembled in this richly satisfying collection.  Filled with humor and spirit, the poems in this book illuminate the toil and tenderness of a well-lived life. Appreciation for Nature, as well as a good dose of respect for its subtle and powerful systems, weaves a thread throughout the book.” ~ Erica Goss, poet, teacher and freelance writer. Founder and Director of Girls’ Voices Matter.

More praise for In the Willing Dirt:

“The poems in Jade Bradbury’s In the Willing Dirt delve into both the physical world and the realm of the spirit, sometimes both at once, as in ‘The Grammar of Dirt & Probability,’ where we are told to ‘plant something/in the willing dirt,’ which does not have to be food for the body, but can be ‘poems to feed a weary world,’ i.e., food for the soul. The poems in this collection celebrate and examine a life from the ‘swampy breathless/birthing bed’ where the poet was born to the day she is ‘counting with a beating heart/my days against eternity,’ conjuring Emily Dickinson as she contemplates breast cancer. There’s a satisfying fullness in these poems, a deep connection to nature, to other people, to one’s self, and to life itself. It’s a warm and spirited collection and a joy to read.”  ~ Lucille Lang Day, author of Becoming an Ancestor: Poems and coeditor of Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California

“When Bradbury invites us into her inner terrain, we can hear the poet’s shaky heartbeat, the storyteller’s insistence beneath the informed choice of image and metaphor. This is a poet who questions everything; who uses her discerning, artistic eye to meticulously record her observations. Some of her poems knock us out of complacency while others seem to hold us in our collective grief, all the while urging us to connect, to salvage, to receive. A finely sculpted group of poems.”  ~ Parthenia M. Hicks, Poet Laureate Emeritus

 Available July 9, 2019, wherever books are sold.  ISBN:  9 781733 126007

Visit Jade Bradbury’s website for updates to her readings and special events schedule at:  JadeBradbury.com

To purchase at Amazon CLICK HERE.

To purchase at Barnes and Noble CLICK HERE.

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Introducing Jade Bradbury

April 23, 2019 By

Purple Passion Press is pleased to announce the upcoming publication of our first chapbook.  We are honored to publish, In The Willing Dirt, by Jade Bradbury.

The poems gathered for In the Willing Dirt reflect a recent six-year period, during which the poet faced serious health challenges and also explored through the writing of these poems the depth of her passion for life and the natural world.  The poems are not in pursuit of answers to questions about why one thing or another besets us, but rather in search of what matters, what is true, no matter what.

Early praise for the chapbook:

Like the gift stones in this collection’s piece, Stones of Tohono O’odham, Jade Bradbury’s poems emit an “illumined glow” that reveals the intricate connections we share with all living things. Whether contemplating crows or lichen, earthquakes or atmospheric rivers, Bradbury’s work, grounded in nature, points to the metaphysical—to the spirit that animates and unites us all. ~~ David Denny, author of Some Divine Commotion (Shanti Arts) http://www.daviddenny.net
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If anyone asks, “Why read present-day poetry?” this book is one good reason. Offering an unflinching companion in loss, a thoughtful consideration of nature, and an erudite mind at work, In the Willing Dirt is a book to ponder, savor, and share with kindred spirits. Her metaphors reach deep into the earth and the psyche.  ~~ Lita Kurth holds an MFA from Pacific Lutheran’s Rainier Writers Workshop and is a co-founder of Flash Fiction Forum, a De Anza College instructor, and an award-winning writer of fiction and nonfiction.
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Poet Jade Bradbury

Jade Bradbury, author of “In The Willing Dirt“

Jade Bradbury was born in Laurel, Mississippi several decades ago. That accident of time and place may have seeded poetry as a preferred medium and eventually led to publication of early work in the literary and little press journals of the 1960’s and 70’s. Her subsequent careers as high school teacher, television writer/story editor, print journalist, and museum curator paid the rent while active poetic pursuit simmered on the backburner.

She’s been a California resident for 45 years, ten of them in Los Angeles, working in Hollywood, National Press Service and Los Angeles Times; the remainder here in the South Bay area. In 2012 her second term of service on the Los Gatos Arts Commission was interrupted by serious illness, freeing her to return to poetry. Since then she has immersed herself in honing observation and experience into poetic voice. Over the past six years she’s been published in poetry anthologies and journals, presenting at regional festivals/events, and has been among Kalamu Productions’ Light-Worker poets on KKUP radio programs. She’s also an occasional featured reader at Flash Fiction Forum in San Jose.

Her chapbook, In the Willing Dirt, is scheduled for official release by Purple Passion Press in July 2019. Part memoir with a strong emphasis on her passion for life and the health of the planet, the poems in this collection are a paean to the mysteries and resilience of the earth and all of its inhabitants.

Visit again for updates on the release and scheduled reading events, and visit Jade’s website: www.jadebradbury.com 

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