Poem read from the Spring 2025 Issue of Touchstone, the journal of poetry and art from the Poetry Society of New Hampshire

Touchstone Readers Norah Smith and Sam Marcotte got to talk to NH poet Patrice Pinette about her new book Happiness is a Strange Bird and her poetic practice. They also got to talk about three poems from the new book.

Patrice Pinette received her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. In the Connections Program of New Hampshire Humanities, she facilitates book discussions with adult learners of English from all over the world. She also leads poetry workshops in the Transdisciplinary Studies in Healing Education program at Antioch University New England, and Center for Anthroposophy’s Renewal Courses. Patrice’s poems have appeared in literary journals and anthologies including Pensive: A Global Journal of Spirituality & the Arts, Touchstone Journal, Poet Showcase: An Anthology of New Hampshire Poets, Allegro Poetry Journal, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, and elsewhere.

About Happiness is a Strange Bird, 2025 from Bee Monk Press:

Purchase Happiness, A Strange Bird on Amazon As primal and fearless as myth, or a great blue heron touching down in a snowstorm in Manhattan, the “strange bird” of this book perches at the edge of Eden, winging to us as if out of memory or the voice in the wilderness we dream has awakened us. Patrice Pinette’s poems, glowing and unholdable as a child’s chased bubbles, limn the mystical both in the ineffable and the domestic. As laden with questions as a “deluge of grief” with tears or peonies with petals, they bow down while we are uplifted, filling with hope and hunger—not so much for answers as for more of the dangerous, playful, momentary encounters with wonder we’re reminded of. Elemental as rain, as magnolias, as love, the color blue, or happiness, these poems transport us as we watch them soar, line by line “dazzling the ordinary.” Alice B Fogel, New Hampshire Poet Laureate Emerita Author of Falsework

An excerpt from the conversation: “. . . in these times we’re in, as you know, language is in a troubled state. The idea of having reverence and a clarity around truth, to have spoken word come from the heart to the heart, that can’t be taken for granted. And I know that what you two are doing… with many other writers and artists and good folks serving others, are keeping words alive as expressions of soul and of your deepest truth.”

We got to chat with Liane St. Laurent about her book un/winter, published with Bee Monk Press.You can listen to the conversation, and some of the poems from the book, here:

Liane St. Laurent is an old dog learning new tricks. She has washed dishes, driven horse-drawn carriages, picked apples, taught English and is now a retired IT professional. Her work appears online and in print in The Banyan Review, Emerge Literary Journal, Roi Fainéant Press, Yellow Arrow Journal and Touchstone, among others. Liane lives in New Hampshire with her husband, two dogs, and an array of woodland creatures.

You can find her book at: https://www.lianestlaurent.com/chapbook

Praise for un/winter:

The poems in Liane St. Laurent’s un/winter find strength and resilience in the natural world, the fabric of our relations, and the “inventory of things un-remembered.” It’s not the name of things, but how they impress upon us that matters: the “wing flit and tail flash” of the junco, the way in early winter “swamp milkweed surrenders silken threads,” the bright “tick-tick of sleet on rhododendron leaves.” There’s a playful attentiveness here. But at the heart of this impressive debut is the urgent question of how to live fully in complex times rife with both joy and sorrow. “Stay with me,” she writes, “together we’ll wait for a different sky.” — Michael Brosnan, author of Emu Blis, Bums Lie, Blue-ism

There is tenderness and magic in Liane St. Laurent’s poems. There are moons, crickets, and singing feet. Her poems sense “the untold secrets of birds.” I am a fan. — Ewa Chrusciel, author of Yours, Purple Gallinule

We got to chat with NH State Poet Laureate Jennifer Militello about her work as Poet Laureate and to listen to and chat about 3 poems. We also talked about her forthcoming work and the value of poetry in turbulent times. You can listen to the conversation and the poems here:



Jennifer Militello is the current Poet Laureate of New Hampshire. She is the author of the hybrid collection Identifying the Pathogen, named a finalist for the 2024 FC2 Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize (forthcoming, 2025), The Pact (Tupelo Press/, 2021) and the memoir , winner of the Dzanc Nonfiction Prize (Dzanc Books, 2019), as well as four previous books of poetry. Her work has appeared in numerous national journals in the U.S. and abroad. She has taught at Brown University, the University of Massachusetts Lowell, the Rhode Island School of Design, and is currently program director of the MFA program at New England College.

You can find out more about her and her work here at: https://jennifermilitello.com/

An Excerpt from the conversation:

"I think of poetry as the most public, safe space there is because I think in our language, we can never be wrong. Like this is the place we speak from. The genuine inside hearts of ourselves and reach out to the genuine inside hearts of others and find the common ground. In the current climate when everyone is doing everything they can to divide us, there is enough space and love for everyone in poems. And so, I'm starting to think of them more and more as a kind of tender battleground, right? The sort of the place where we protect one another and protect ourselves because, you know, the tender and the real and empathy and connection are what poems are for. No matter what we're saying, it's about connecting, you know, creating, literally building a road from one heart to another in a genuine and true way."

Poetry from Touchstone Volume 66, Fall 2024 from the Poetry Society of New Hampshire

https://psnh.org/audio/