I’m delighted to welcome poet, Laura Theis, to Patricia’s Pen. Laura is celebrating the anniversary of her poetry collection, A Spotter’s Guide to Invisible Things. Without further ado it’s over to Laura to tell you all about it.
Happy Book Anniversary to A Spotter’s Guide To Invisible Things…
Laura Theis
I always feel like publishing a book is like a little time capsule – a snapshot of the things that I was grappling with at a certain point in time.
My very first book of poems, how to extricate yourself, came out in December 2020, in the middle of a worldwide pandemic’s hard lockdown, and just days after the sudden shocking death of a dear friend.
A Spotter’s Guide To Invisible Things contains everything I wrote in the three years since – and one of the ‘invisible things’ referenced in the title is a hidden undercurrent of grief running below the poems, even though many of them are about a search for wonder and myth and language and imaginary scenarios like a person crashing through my skylight, a surreal ride on a night mare, or matching with the sky on a dating app…
Now, A Spotter’s Guide To Invisible Things is approaching its one-year publication anniversary and time is showing off its ability for strange contortions again: so much has happened in this period – from the incredibly painful to the magical.
Very recently, I read a German translation of the opening poem of this collection while fighting back tears at another dear person’s funeral. But I also read from it on a Swedish Lake with wild roaming reindeer listening in during the Alpine Fellowship symposium, or in my friend’s fairy-light-glowing forest grove of a living room in Devon, or at an International Women’s Day Celebration in Hay-on-Wye, or at a wonderful festival for translingual writers in Graz. I am so grateful the book exists and that I still get to share these poems – connecting with readers is always what makes me the happiest. Ada Limòn, a poet I fiercely admire, once said that ‘we write with all the good ghosts in our corner’ and I am so grateful for the truth of this.
Another thing that will always be special about this book is that my dear friend and favourite fine artist Rose-Marie Caldecott has been creating work that speaks beautifully of all the things I was trying to find words for, and I love the book so much more because it has been graced with one of her astonishing paintings that show the making of invisible rooted connections, of trees reaching for each other under the surface.
There are already two new books on the horizon for next year – one of them my children’s debut. But A Spotter’s Guide To Invisible Things will always be incredibly special to me and I will always be grateful and excited for it to spread out its roots and wings and tendrils and find another soul with whom to connect. Maybe it will be you, reading this?
“This is a collection full of unexpected observations: slant ways of looking at the world. From the opening poem through ‘in my mother tongue the name for grand piano is wing’ to ‘ a sci-fi story about flying urn hauntings that would make an excellent Hollywood blockbuster’ the reader encounters intriguingly titled poems which demonstrate a wry humour as well as an adroit use of language. The poet deals with myth and everyday occurrences equally adeptly. Selkies, Taygete, tree surgeons, angels, bindweed and animal rescue centers are all at home in these poems. Reading this collection was an enchanting journey along an unpredictable route with a new delight on every page.” – Susannah Hart
About Laura Theis
Laura Theis writes poetry, songs, and fiction in her second language. Her work appears in POETRY, Oxford Poetry, Magma, Rattle, Aesthetica, Mslexia, and others, and she has received the Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize, the Oxford Brookes Poetry Prize, the Poets & Players Prize, the Hammond House International Literary Award, the AM Heath Prize, the Mogford Short Story Prize, as well as a Forward Prize nomination. Her debut how to extricate yourself was an Oxford Poetry Library Book of the Month, was nominated for the Elgin Award by the SciFi&Fantasy Poetry Association and won the Brian Dempsey Memorial Prize. Her new collection A Spotter’s Guide To Invisible Things won the Live Canon Collection Prize and received the Arthur Welton Award from the Society of Authors. A new poetry collection from Broken Sleep Books and her children’s debut Poems From A Witch’s Pocket (Emma Press) are forthcoming in 2025.
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Patricia M Osborne 