Joann Gardner with Heart's Core

About the Book:

Moving through a variety of scenes and circumstances, this book offers a search for what matters: a sense of identity and purpose in an otherwise unstable world.

The poems of Heart’s Core take the reader through numerous settings, events and moods in search of a sense of belonging or home. They probe memories, both real and imagined, to uncover what makes them important and explore ways to articulate how-it-feels. Sheila Ortiz-Taylor has described these works as “poems of loss and retrieval,” offering a kind of roadmap for experience, and Lola Haskins has pointed to the intimacy of the process: “Gardner is so present in each of her many settings that we, as readers, can’t be anywhere but with her.” One finds in Heart’s Core moments of transcendence that take us beyond the limits of everyday life, giving us glimpses not only of who we are, but where we’re going.

About the Author:

A native of Maine, Joann Gardner holds an M.A. from the University of York (England) and a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. She taught English and Creative Writing at Florida State University, where she co-founded and directed Runaway with Words, a poetry workshop for at-risk youth, and served as Associate Editor for Anhinga Press. She is currently working as a freelance writer, contributing historical and literary essays to the Harpswell Anchor. Her poems have appeared in such journals as Crazyhorse, Barrow Street, Louisiana Literature and Cimarron Review. Her chapbook La Florida won the Weldon Kees Prize, and The Deaf Island won the Chapbook Fellowship from The Poetry Society of America. She divides her time between Tallahassee, Florida and Bailey Island, Maine.