I’m pleased to share that my poem, “child asks why did you” has been nominated by Editor Meia Geddes of Poetose for a Pushcart Prize. ~ November 2024
My poem, Beach of Hvar with Po, won 3rd Prize & is published in the summer 2024 Common Ground Review Issue, selected & reviewed by poet Rebecca Hart Olander, Spring/Summer, July 2024. You can read it here.
My new poetry collection, jinx and heavenly calling–I poached a portion of my mother’s love letters to my father, 1953-1954, published by Lily Poetry Review Books, March 2023, is now available for purchase!
ABOUT JINX AND HEAVENLY CALLING
Lusty, vigorous, zestful. It’s hard to imagine our parents in the throes of passion, yet jinx and heavenly calling does just that. DuMar culls original text and graphics from love letters her mother penned to the poet’s father during 1953-1954. From these letters mailed between first date and marriage, DuMar distills her mother’s intimacies, anxieties, and endearments, engaging readers in the captivating dynamic of a couple falling into a 50-year future.
Available for purchase
at Amazon
Opening the Box of Surprise
By Kelly DuMar
About my new poetry collection: jinx and heavenly calling, and how I poached a portion of my mother’s love letters to my father, 1953-1954
I am tired, Beloved, of chafing my heart against
The want of you;
Of squeezing it into little inkdrops,
And posting it. . .
~ Excerpt from “The Letter,” by Amy Lowell
It was a gift I had no expectation of receiving—this box of surprise that came into my hands a few years ago. A lost treasure I had no idea existed in the world. Inside: All the letters, handwritten, that my mother had sent to my father during their courtship, from 1953-1954, starting with their first date and ending soon after they married. . .
CONTINUE READING HERE AT THE JOURNAL OF EXPRESSIVE WRITING
girl in tree bark: poems and prose
by Kelly DuMar
Available Now From Nixes Mate Books: July 2019
“With a poet’s ear and a photographer’s eye, Kelly DuMar has crafted richly detailed poems that capture life’s ordinary moments and turn them into something extra-ordinary. The language in this collection is stunning and rewards multiple readings of each poem. From a mother wrapping her children (the tribe of the poet and her siblings) in winter warmth so they will be “giddy, winging, weightless” to “scattering a parent’s ashes as the adult children “move out from under his cloud,” both loved ones and the natural world are vividly brought to life and raised in transcendence.”
--Donna Baier Stein, Publisher of Tiferet Journal and Author, Scenes from the Heartland
READ MY INTERVIEW WITH MASS. POETRY here.
TREE OF THE APPLE
Chapbook
Published by Two of Cups Press (out of print)
https://twoofcupspress.wordpress.com/titles/
In this beautiful cycle of lamentations, Kelly DuMar follows her father through the wasteland of Alzheimer’s, tracking his failing mind with the faithfulness of a daughter and a poet. The sounds of the words as I say them, he watches, she writes, evoking the fathomless movements behind his eyes. Elsewhere, she lets him speak for himself as he gathers petals under a trellis: This is how you bend without tipping/This is how you kneel and lift a soft thing/up like a flake of cold that falls from a cloud/when it’s white all over. This is how you lose without breaking, says this book, so filled with that rare poetic sentiment: steadfast family love. At the end, all five siblings gathered around his bed, someone hits on the idea of reading David Copperfield out loud. …we take turns reading/to each other with the masterful passion of a/parent comforting a child to sleep at the end/of a day breaking. Keep this little book nearby, for its passion and its comfort, because nothing comforts like knowing you are accompanied in your sorrows. - Aimée Sands
Copies from the publisher have sold out, but are available in limited quantity through Kelly DuMar
ALL THESE CURES
Chapbook
Winner of Lit House Press' 2014 poetry chapbook contest.
"All These Cures is, like the unsent letter of its opening poem, a quest. Kelly DuMar’s poems are at once ethereal and bold, often taking the shape of both the unfurling string of questions that come from looking back, and the stitching together of those questions themselves, forming an intricate treasure map toward the X of understanding. Each poem gives itself unabashedly to the reflection from which it seems to have been conceived, but instead of settling there, leans forward into the grey space of meaning to face its complexity. The ecstatic moments in DuMar’s poems are electrifying, full of simultaneous urgency and quietude. tanzania (“Do you know the way home? Take me home now so you/will see how we got here from there and by that I mean do/you know how much your life matters to me?”) With All These Cures, like the speaker in “Singing Over Your Bones,” DuMar has sung her words home."
- Laurin Becker Macios, Mass. Poetry Program Director
Purchase here.
Selected Poetry Publications
I have five poems published/re-published on The Nature of Our Times website, including: Un-Mowed; To a snapper hatchling; Woods Cycle; Before the Shortest Day, Wild Blueberries & Autumn Woods at Dusk, January 2025.
My poem, August Woods at Dusk, is published in the winter 2024 issue of Flyway.
My poem, Table of Magic, was published in Issue 14 of Taos Poetry Journal, 2024
My poem, “child asks why did you” is published in Poetose, October, 2024.
My poem, Beach of Hvar with Po, won 3rd Prize & is published in the summer 2024 Common Ground Review Issue, selected & reviewed by poet Rebecca Hart Olander, Spring/Summer, July 2024
My poem, Lambing was published in the July 2024 issue of Allium, A Journal of Poetry
Hunter’s Moon with Grandson, was published in One Art, 2024.
Cocklebur, published in Thimble Lit Mag, Sept. 2023.
Three hybrid poems from letters, “goodness” and “in a bad way” and “storm” are reprinted in the August 2023 issue of Does It Have Pockets
Two hybrid poems from letters, “skinny fingers” and “hectic” are published in the Winter 2022 issue of Glint Literary Journal
Daffodils at Dawn, Sunflower 3 o’clock, A swampy area, Mid-March, in Parhelion, Summer, 2022
nest cycle, in Plants & Poetry, June 2022
Nosara, in South 85, Spring/Summer 2022
Misadventure with Peas, in Bracken, Issue IX, 2022
Snug, wishes, 3 cents, our little “rush" in Thimble Lit Mag, Spring 2022
Before the Shortest Day, Wild Blueberries, We went to the fair, & July Six—To the Lake, published in Lily Poetry Review, 2022
good Samaritan published in Glassworks
Fruitbody, Plants & Poetry Journal, 2022
Chicken of the Woods; Feather in the Grass; River Artists (Ice Image), 3 original photos & poems, published Winter 2022, Synchroniciti
scattering and start autumn, 2022, published in The Dodge
August, Old Brickyard, Chilmark, 2021, On the Seawall
woods cycle, Thrush, November 2021
It’s easy to drown (2), Change Seven, Summer 2021
September, Then Now & Easter in the Pickup, Flock Lit, Issue 24
Marriage in October Barn, Rat’s Ass Review, Summer Issue 2021
My Featured Poet Recording of the New England Poetry Club April 11, 2021
Thanksgiving, Montreal, Book of Matches
It’s Easy to Drown, Sand Hills Literary Magazine
Dyslexic, Sand Hills Literary Magazine
Selections from “Post Cards From the Gulf:” words & images, Lightning Whelk: Furious; Unicorn; Broken, Thimble
Triple Bypass, Rockvale Review
A Mother’s Wishful, The Ocotillo Review
April 30, 1973 Palooka
Heaven and Earth Palooka
Pinked Palooka
Count Backward Palooka
Creating Disturbance Tilde
Contributor Spotlight SPLIT ROCK REVIEW
The Trouble of Us, Split Rock Review
\ ' fä- t͟hər \, Split Rock Review
Samara, Sky Island Journal
jeweled city, The Hunger
Sunday Morning in Memory Care He Remembers She’s Gone, Pamplemousse
From Horseshoe Beach, Unbroken Journal
Peanut Mother, Bellevue Review
Places of Origin & Her Loaf, Half Baked, Crab Fat
Unlearning This Classroom, Lumina Journal
Who Does Not Love a Wall, Tupelo Quarterly
All These Cures, Rkvry Quarterly
Multiple Pieces, Literary Mama
Umbilicus, Gravel Mag
Tree of the Apple, Good Men Project
Singing Over Your Bones, Linger Post
Communion, Sliver Stone Mag
This Weight, Glint Journal
Beyond, When Women Waken
The Most Atrocious Crimes, Unlost Journal
September 28, 1948, Lunch Review
Seven Poems, Tower Journal
Where My Real Mother Lives, Blast Furnace
Last Night of Make Believe, Friend Stories
Mystery Shopper in Memory Care, Free Alzheimer's Support