Kairos: Winner of the 2018 New Women's Voices Series

Kairos, Libby Maxey's first poetry collection, speaks both to the passage of time and to the timelessness of being. The epistolary quality of the sonnet form is front and center, insisting on connection, even as the poems suggest that the mysteries of the past have nothing on the mysteries of our personal present and the people we love. Kairos makes family out of history, gleaning a rich and mythic past from literature and place to structure, interpret, and communicate the present. Whether capturing the explosive intimacy of parenthood or the shortcomings of faith, Maxey's verses order chaos with metaphor. Kairos takes us from New England to the Washington coast to Japan, gathering in what breaks apart. Rooted in the natural world and blooming with music, these luminous poems have won the Poet's Seat Poetry Contest, the Robert P. Collén Poetry Contest, and the New Women's Voices prize from Finishing Line Press.