Summary (also available through PDF flier): Fences explores boundaries imposed or assumed that define and direct our experiences in this world. Nevertheless, it looks with merriment at the offbeat and ordinary influences encountered on the way, from monks to chicken coops to Elvis. Here is praise for this third collection of poetry from Cheryl Denise, author also of I Saw God Dancing and What's in the Blood:

“In the poem ‘Waking to Spring,’ Denise writes, ‘I've been collecting words for years / for this exact day,’ and I believe her. Her eye for detail and her ability to find the miraculous in the mundane is remarkable, as if she moves through her life armed with a hand lens and notebook. These are poems of reverence and gratitude, farm life and frustration, but regardless of their subject, Cheryl Denise's poems are full of heart and grace, reminding us that it is a blessing to be wonderfully, imperfectly, perfectly human.” —Doug Van Gundy, Author, A Life Above Water

“‘Fence work never gets done,’ Denise writes in a collection that expertly explores literal and figurative wanderers both within and beyond the boundaries of our lives, our loves, our comfort zones: sheep, family, tenants, preachers, depression, the imagination. Here, Denise lingers in the spaces in which ‘a poem clamors to be written,’ reminding us, ‘the harvest is for everyone.’” —Hayley Mitchell Haugen, Editor, Sheila-Na-Gig Editions

“‘I pick him up hitchhiking . . . / his face a plowed field, dirt and stone, but I see that six-year-old, / his full name scrawled across the manger,’ writes Cheryl Denise in a poetry collection which brings much to the fold: the past and the present, the lost and the found. Forthright and vulnerable, the speaker in these compelling poems defies barriers, confronts anxieties, and presents the valuable perspective of a Mennonite poet still attuned to the farm.” —Shari Wagner, former Indiana Poet Laureate; Author, The Farm Wife’s Almanac

Market: Anyone interested in eloquent poems about fences and boundaries and borders—whether keeping the sheep in or maintaining or breaking the fences the author puts up around self, marriage, friendships, the greater world

Shelving: Poetry; Anabaptist-Mennonite literature; West Virginia

The Author: West Virginia author Cheryl Denise grew up in Elmira, Ontario, has served as an RN, and today lives with her husband Mike in the intentional community of Shepherds Field in Philippi, West Virginia, in a timber-framed house they built themselves. This is her third poetry collection, following I Saw God Dancing (DreamSeeker Books, 2005) and What's in the Blood (DreamSeeker, 2012).

Quote: “In spring I dream of woven wire gleaming / with sunlight and promises kept, /fresh silver pulled taut against long lines / of locust posts erect as soldiers / alert and ready. / But my fence is a reunion of droopy old men / barely able to hang on to their tangle of rusty wires.” —Excerpted from the title poem, “Fences”

Publisher: Cascadia Publishing House LLC
Imprint: DreamSeeker Books
Potential Copublisher: None
Publication date: 2022
Tentative Pages: 128
Format: 5.5 x 8.5" trade paper 
Prices: $14.95 US/Can. ISBN 13:  978-1-68027-023-5