Synopses & Reviews
Poetry. "In Kelle Groom's LUCKILY, tenderness transforms violence: 'A kiss on a cigarette burn.' In poems both mysterious and candid, Groom captures domesticity and dream, internal and external landscapes, addiction and recovery. Groom is pitch perfect when it comes to emotional nuance. She constructs flawless images about our miraculous, vulnerable bodies. Luckily is a fierce and important book"--Denise Duhamel. Kelle Groom's first collection of poems is Underwater City. Her poems have appeared in Agni, Barrow Street, Crab Orchard Review, DoubleTake/Points of Entry, Florida Review, The New Yorker, Poetry, The Texas Observer, Witness, 88: A Journal of Contemporary American Poetry and other magazines.
Review
"In Kelle Groom's Luckily, tenderness transforms violence: 'A kiss on a cigarette burn.' In poems both mysterious and candid, Groom captures domesticity and dream, internal and external landscapes, addiction and recovery. Groom is pitch perfect when it comes to emotional nuance. She constructs flawless images about our miraculous, vulnerable bodies. Luckily is a fierce and important book." Denise Duhamel
Review
"Kelle Groom's exhilarating poems put human intoxicants (like love) close to hand. As they sweep a sometimes painful burden of experience along one unforeseeable line after another, they also offer a crash course in how, when forgetting's not an option, memory takes another deep breath and works like mercy." Terri Witek
About the Author
Kelle Groom is the author of FIVE KINGDOMS (Anhinga Press, 2009), LUCKILY, a 2006 Florida Book Award winner (Anhinga Press, 2006), and Underwater City (University Press of Florida, 2004). Her poems have appeared in Agni, DoubleTake, Gettysburg Review, The New Yorker, Ploughshares, and Poetry, among others. Her awards include residency fellowships from Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Millay Colony, as well as a Tennessee Williams Scholarship from the Sewanee Writers' Conference, four Pushcart Prize nominations, and grants from the State of Florida, Division of Cultural Affairs, Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, United Arts of Central Florida, Volusia County Cultural Council, and New Forms Florida. She has taught writing at the University of Central Florida and is poetry editor of The Florida Review.