2023 NAIWE Poetry Book Winner
Changing Tides: Poetry of Love, Loss and New Life
Author: Katy Hoover
Life includes love, loss, and new life, but it seems unnatural every time a parent outlives a child. In Changing Tides, a collection of poems shares how one mother can feel love, loss, and joy all at the same time. Through the processing of her grief, Katy Hoover has discovered how these emotions can be connected while not allowing one emotion to overtake another. She learns how some choices and some relationships mean more to her now than they once did.
You lost a child
I did not know
I said, “so heartbreaking”
And went on to happier things
Now I know
I look to you
to see that I too, can survive
Grief has a way of sneaking up on the living, and Katy Hoover relays just how it has done so during holidays, at a particular location, or while driving down a road. However, as time has passed, the author has learned to control the grief and allow herself to feel joy in the moment.
In a second
I decided
Not to feed the grief
For today
I will feel it
Not share it
Not be overwhelmed by it
The prologue, titled “Journey,” introduces the voyage of the loss of the author’s son, but as one reads the poems, the reader goes on this ride with Katy Hoover as she works through the grief, learns about her son’s unborn child, and helps his other children to not forget their father.
We would be a family
A few weeks later
Kody’s widow sent an ultrasound image
Of their precious unborn daughter
Zoey
As I looked at this miracle of life
I experienced pure joy
In that moment I knew that I had a choice
To mentally review all the reasons
That made her life bittersweet
Or to choose…..Joy
This collection of poems is a beautiful, comforting compilation to help others process their grief. Many of the poems can be read over and over again and bring a bittersweet hug from one person to another, to help one not feel quite so alone.
Congratulations, Katy Hoover’s Changing Tides: Poetry of Love, Loss and New Life for being a NAIWE 2023 Book Award winner!
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