On Shifting Shoals

I love the humor, the finesse, the wisdom in Joanne Durham's On Shifting Shoals. Her evocative language immerses us in every aspect of the beach town where she lives. We are up early "...to watch... / yolk spreading across the sky, / nourishing us more than anything / scrambled up in kitchens." She goes head-to-head with a man carping about "a creepy old guy" digging through garbage at 6 a.m. Her response: "...salvage the bounty / that belongs / to us all. Scrounge / through rubbish to find it..." Deeply aware of the environmental perils facing the ocean, she concludes the poem "The Mayor Supports Oil Drilling off Our Coast" with, "Startled on our seaside stroll / by sudden shadows thrown across the sand, / we look up to a perfect pod / of pelicans, swooping overhead." Durham's brain is wise. Her heart supple. Read her and clap for joy.

Dannye Romine Powell, Author, In the Sunroom with Raymond Carver



The poems in On Shifting Shoals feel as cleansing as the ocean, as essential and elemental as water itself. In each one, Joanne Durham urges us "to listen/between roar and purr," and to "savor" those in-between moments of observation and close attention that she brings shimmering to life on every page. I could not be more grateful for her deep presence in this work, and in the world.

James Crews, Poet and Editor of The Path to Kindness: Poems of Connection & Joy



Joanne Durham brings the personal and the intimate to her keen observational poems of the natural world. From watching orange butterflies and blossoms "blend into one," to noticing how a Christmas tree repurposed on a dune still "shines as the graced/do," to observing ghost crabs emerge from tunnels on the beach at night disturbed by "humans/with menacing eyes....," Durham's poems compel us to marvel, and feel deeply, about the world around us.

Georgia Heard, Co-author, A Field Guide to the Heart: Poems of Love, Comfort, and Hope; founding member of the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project.