Stacie Smith

Some of the places described in Break the Spell can be found on actual maps. Others are states of mind, to be found in dreams, reveries. All of them are attempts to describe that place where outer landscape dovetails with inner, where a poem can be intermediary between the two realms. Break the Spell is an offering of sixty such attempts.

The poems in Stacie Smith's sixth collection, Trail to the Spring, are distillations of recent thoughts, experiences, and observations. They are brief accounts of what the author notices going on around and in her. Prompted by dreams, imaginings, human news, weather, friends, places, and moments in time, these poems are written as a way to understand what the author-and all of us-pays attention to, wonders about, and loves.

June Campbell Rose and Stacie Smith first met in 1967 in East Boothbay, Maine. Smith, a photographer and poet, had traveled from Eugene, Oregon, to Maine. Rose had recently given birth to her first son, Nathan. Smith met this mother and child at the post office and wanted to take their portrait. This turned out to be a very special meeting during which time a bond was made: both were born-again poets who kept journals and notebooks, filled with their thoughts laid down, like life lines to a deeper self. Fifty years in the making, this book reveals a unique collaboration between two poets whose histories include deep roots upon opposite shores, a chance meeting, and the exchange of poems, spanning time and distance.

Resolving Land and Energy Conflicts studies energy in the landscape across gas and oil, wind, transmission and nuclear waste disposal. The authors are particularly interested in the conflicts that emerge from specific sites and proposals as well as how this unique land use plays out in terms of conflict and resolution across scales and jurisdictions while touching on broader issues of policy and values. Resolving Land and Energy Conflicts briefly explains the general context around the energy type; the impacts and conflicts that have arisen given this context; the role laws, rules and jurisdictions play in mitigating, resolving or creating more conflict; and the ways in which communication, collaboration and conflict resolution have been or could be used to ameliorate the conflicts that inevitably arise.

A collection of impassioned poems born from the love of a place called Cougar Creek.