Join us in Ann Arbor for an evening of joy, wit, and poetry with wonderful local authors, Greg Rappleye and Jack Ridl.

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About Barley Child:

Barley Child, Greg Rappleye’s fifth collection, draws from family legends, whispered stories, and sworn denials across four generations of Irish American lives—recalled, imagined, and reconstructed from census records, old letters, church registries, yellowed newspaper clippings, and a few odd photographs in which the human figures are often unnamed. The sum of these affidavits, arrayed across the lyric and narrative lines of these poems, is an electrifying human choir—male and female, child and adult, Irish and American—their voices rising out of shame, poverty, absurdity, violence, a strained Catholic faith, and a virulent legacy of madness and alcoholism.

Free of nostalgia and cant, with a sharp Irish wit that often braves nearly monstrous subject matter, and reported with eyes that seldom mist over, Barley Child is a volume that once again confirms Greg Rappleye as a poet of witness.

Not able to join us? Order your copy here: https://www.schulerbooks.com/book/9781682262696

About Greg Rappleye:

Greg Rappleye is the author of A Path Between Houses, Figured Dark, and Tropical Landscape with Ten Hummingbirds, and is a former Bread Loaf Fellow in Poetry and the winner of the 2000 Brittingham Prize in Poetry. His poems have appeared in Poetry,the Southern Review,the North American Review, Arts & Letters, Shenandoah, Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. He teaches in the English department at Hope College in Michigan.

About All at Once:

A stunning poetry collection that offers solace and understanding.

Jack Ridl’s latest collection, All at Once, is structured as a lyrical collage that looks back at his eighty years of life in a rearview mirror. Nothing eludes this poet’s attention, reflection, or unbridled joy. Ridl’s poems, written in a direct style and tender voice, bring together mismatched meditations, leading us to experience the reality that neither ourselves nor wherever we are is one-sided. These poems are musings on loss and grief, softly interwoven with devotion, human connection, and love. In the words of his daughter when she was seven years old, “Daddy, ‘with’ is the most important word in the world because we are always ‘with.’” Each person reveals infinite realities of “with.” All at Once is for anyone in need of companionship or a gentle smile.

Not able to join us? Order your copy here: https://www.schulerbooks.com/book/9781960327062

About Jack Ridl:

Jack Ridl, poet laureate of Douglas, Michigan, is the author of Saint Peter and the Goldfinch and All at Once.