Books
Ash in the Tree
Ash in the Tree is a memoir-esque collection of musings and memories, heartbreaks and noticings following the death of my mother in November 2019. My personal loss was quickly followed by a global pandemic where we collectively moved into a new world of grief and unknowing.
Lemons and Cement
Lemons and Cement riffs on place -- on my upbringing in Los Angeles and then my adult life in Montana. Themes of motherhood and loss abound, with echoes of both palm and ponderosas throughout.
“Wryly funny and infinitely wise, Ash in the Tree is an intimate portrait of the life-cherishing power of grief, from sharing a perfect cocktail with one’s 84-year-old mother to a ‘lemon and cement, roses and exhaust’-scented commute. “When is it long enough/to have lived long enough?” Kessler asks in one poem, offering ‘forgiveness/that’s not accusatory’ in another. Like grace, the reader leaves wishing only for more.”
-Jeremy Smith, author of Breaking and Entering
“Reading Ash in the Tree by Gillian Kessler was a profoundly moving experience. I felt the ebb and flow of life and death washing over me and was utterly captivated by the voice of this young mother who loses her hearing and her mother making the connection and devotion between mother and child something desperate and ultimately appreciated for the immortal gift that it is.”
-Susie Petrucelli, author of Raised a Warrior
"Gillian Kessler's poems wind their way through the garden of grief, unafraid and vibrant. This book is a reckoning, a balm for the broken heart."
~Susanna Sonnenberg, author of Her Last Death
“Poetry that is both vigil and healing in one. Gillian Kessler may not be able to hear, but oh my can she see. Every detail. Every feeling. Every detour. If anyone has figured out what goodbye might be, it is Gillian. This book is an unflinching guide through grief that lasts like love."
Elke Govertsen, CEO and founder of Mamalode.
"Gillian Kessler sings songs of grief, mortality, and matter in a voice that is as tender and attentive as a child reaching out to touch a wildflower. In these earth-touchings, Kessler restores our connection with what we thought had eluded our grasp; in Ash in the Tree, the going and the gone hold hands."
- Chris Dombrowski, author of Body of Water
“Gillian Kessler has the ability to whisper lines like “When is it long enough / to have lived long enough?” into her poems with both conviction and confession. Her work, and this book, pulsate questions that can only be answered once the answer is just out of sight. For Kessler, death is a relationship, a transmitted energy, an obsession replete with more sorrow than fear. She spends time with her images, unfolding them gently, massaging them down the page with grace. These poems ripple through lake water. They are filled with wild horses, hospital smells, and that sort of quiet sadness you can hum to. Kessler finds a way to make you feel things you never knew you were capable of. And once you feel them, it is impossible to return to the day unchanged.”
-Phillip Schaffer, author of Bad Summon
Excerpt from Flapper Press Poetry Cafe
…I hope that my work helps people see themselves just a bit. I know that I stepped on to the grief train with a heavy thud; I wondered where the words were to help me understand what I was feeling. I hope that Ash in the Tree helps people through the loss of a parent if, at least, to help them recognize that the magnitude of their feelings is absolutely okay. In the U.S., it seems that our understood rituals around grief (three bereavement-leave days, a funeral, a burial, and moving right along . . . ) is perfunctory, at best. I was wholly unrecognizable to myself for many, many months after my mom died. This book was a way for me to process the hugeness of it all.
-Gillian Kessler
Press and Poetry
Interviews
Writing
April Poetry from Gillian Kessler, Flapper Press
The Conditional—Poems for the Future Unknown, Flapper Press
Poems by Gillian Kessler, Flapper Press
On Bringing My Child to Malawi—Some Morning Musings, Flapper Press
The Cord, Mamalode Magazine
Video
from The Scarf
It’s been two months and
grief still takes
my breath away,
makes me heave and
catches me like a scarf
on a nail, an unexpected
tug around the neck or
better yet, being rear ended
while driving in summertime,
the windows are rolled down,
like the old fashioned kind,
the kind you crank,
your favorite jam is loud on the radio
and you’re just kinda
crusin’,
crusin’,
and bam.
It’s like that.
Poem Pieces
from I Am No Longer Afraid of Open Space
I carry the dog up the steps, bones.
When is it long enough
to have lived long enough?
Years taste like cinnamon and honey,
warm milk. Remember?
You reminded me that sometimes, it’s cruel
to keep things alive. Daughter says:
Isn’t it more cruel to kill her, and
isn’t that just the question of the day.
from Deaf Girl
We somehow knew the silence
would bury us all - the stillness and
warnings of ash and sharp tongues
screaming across the valley.
I’m a deaf girl in a volcanic world,
my drums ruptured and stilled,
no longer willing to thrive, even in this
fertile opening of a new year.
I’m a deaf girl in a clamorous world,
warning signs blare over Echo Park,
they spatter and shout and still, all I heard
was the quiet of shadows, the way you began
to resemble a moon.