When the Redbud Wilts
Published by Summer Palace Press in 2023 with support from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and the Comhairie Contae Dhûn na nGall, this debut collection includes poems that were previously published by Kansas Voices, After the Pause, Corvus Review, Ghostlight, and velvet-tail, among others.
Praise for When the Redbud Wilts:
“Heather Mydosh is a poet who shatters myths of the Midwest, the heartland, the family farm, the working class. Instead, she speaks with fierce integrity in unflinching and unforgettable language… The poet’s compassion roots itself in the hard dirt of this world. Every poem offers indelible proof that here is where poetry belongs, that poetry needs the scent of spilt gasoline, that Poetry is the skin beneath the cracked callus. We all need the poetry of Heather Mydosh.”
— Martín Espada,
2022 winner, National Book Award
“Poetry is not a luxury, Audre Lorde stated, and When the Redbud Wilts meets necessity head-on. These poems drive to work, wait in clinics, walk to the compost pile— in other words, they accompany you. They are populated by folks and creatures and abound in encounters, circumstances, and above all consequences, and they sing in a particular American Midwest grain that is all Mydosh’s own. There is no luxe here… A poetry of conscience, of witness, of grit, and hard-spun clarity, this collection will not let you off easy but neither will it let you down.”
— Jeanne Marie Beaumont
Author, Letters from Limbo
“Her poems are charged with lyric intensity… Mydosh displays immense empathy and brings to our attention people who might otherwise remain invisible… Mydosh is humorous, elegiac, satirical, and compassionate (sometimes all in the same poem). When the Redbud Wilts is a debut collection to learn from and celebrate.”
— Ted & Annie Deppe