WINNER OF THE 2020 CATAMARAN POETRY PRIZE

PRAISE FOR IN THE TIME OF GREAT FIRES

 These moving poems open us. Some so tender they draw tears, some with words sharp like a smack, some by laughter, and all bringing gifts. 

—Jack Kornfield author of A Path With Heart 

The entry anonymously chosen for the 2020 Catamaran Poetry Prize is Alison Luterman’s In the Time of Great Fires. These are poems brimming with life experience and deep with heart. The poems are spoken intimately to the reader with compassion, insight, and a squinty eye that doesn’t miss the details. The poet recounts both tragedies and joys, always in the context of a wish for more kindness in the world. In the world of In the Time of Great Fires, people are flawed but worthy of love. The poet reflects on a life lived with boldness and a willingness to open to the world in all its delicious confusion. In the Time of Great Fires embraces the present moment with all its difficulties, assuring us that as we face this most fearful time, we stand with other true seekers. 

—Zack Rogow

Alison Luterman’s wonderful new collection, In The Time of Great Fires, engages deeply with the world, weaving past, present and future to consider our shared humanity. Sometimes with humor, always with heart, Luterman insists on compassion, a recognition of “the slender, fraying threads” we all dangle from. Particularly powerful are poems that illuminate the lives of girls and women: a grandmother who left Russia at fifteen, then “settled into her fate,” the gun control activist Emma Gonzalez, “not ashamed, not compliant. . . yelling truth into the microphone.” Though the book chronicles disasters—pandemic, climate change, gun violence, threats to democracy— beauty abounds: “nail polish. . . the exact iridescence of abalone and new pennies,” jasmine that gives off “the white-hot honey of distant stars.” In The Time of Great Fires achieves a wise and welcome balance, like “a candle that doesn’t conquer the dark but cracks it just a peep, at the seams. 

—Ellen Bass