River Mouth: Poems
Stevens Point, Wisconsin: Cornerstone Press, University of Wisconsin
Publication date: January 26, 2027
To preorder, call (715-346-4532) or email ( cornerstone.press@uwsp.edu )
“…a vivid and deeply touching threnody to the natural world, a lament of maternal concern and environmental alarm, passionate and embracing, with a guide who morphs in and out of a remarkable other called Hildegard–like Virgil and Dante, perhaps–finding consolation if not resolution in being both Earth’s mothers and her children.” – Dan Gerber, author of The End of Michelangelo
“Woe to the men of letters, woe to fishermen parsing currents in waders–from first long gush to final wake, the poems of Alison Swan’s unmastered River Mouth are fit to burst the dam and sweep us into the sea. These are enchantments in the most ancient and binding sense, naming songs that slow and repair our attention. Here the mother tongue is a muscle, “mammalian and plain,” but never tame. “My needs are boundless,” scribes Swan, and the distinction between self and myth, between city and eddy, between water and daughter muddies, then clears: what we have witnessed is already gone or soon to disappear. Here are the taut and urgent poems of a mature poet and attendant animist documenting the levy’s break. To this narrow shore, this washed out bank, lay your ear.” – Jennifer Sperry Steinorth, author of Boys Behind Glass
“The only thing as magic as the place where land and water meet the Great Lakes is Alison Swan’s description of it. Through her eyes we see this place in a reverential way. This is a beautifully rendered, profoundly moving tour de force. This is a beautifully rendered, profoundly moving tour de force.” – Dave Dempsey, author of Great Lakes for Sale
“The remarkable nature of these poems is their quiet presence within earshot of water, wing and wildness, no matter the location. Swan’s poems prepare us for an imperiled future, but allow us to live fully in our present, however flawed and uncertain. This gift to the reader rests in both the poet’s watchfulness, but also in her understanding of how humans fit into the ecosphere which is our earth and sea. The poet talks to trees, birds and deer as if they will answer. Acknowledges what she does and does not know. Understands that she might need to carry wildness inside her. – Ellen Stone, author of Everybody Wants to Keep the Moon Inside Them
A Fine Canopy: Poems
Detroit, Michigan: Wayne State University Press, 2020
“Thank all the muses that these beautiful poems by Alison Swan arrive to help us take notice of our own fragility and that of our world. Not oblivious to sorrow, far from it, but so raptly involved in all that constitutes the ground beneath our feet and the canopy above us as to give us heart. This book is truly restorative reading.” – Linda Gregerson, author of Prodigal: New and Selected Poems
“These poems thrive beneath a canopy of nuanced connections with crows, stars, leaves, lakes, a lover, a daughter, and most potently, a self. Swan offers us poems of faith and resilience that arise from her deep sustained perception of a natural world where ‘everything gives back light.'” – Diane Seuss, author of Four-Legged Girl and Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl
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Fresh Water: Women Writing on the Great Lakes
East Lansing, Michigan: Michigan State University Press
2007 Michigan Notable Book
“Unusual and unusually beautiful.” – Donna Seaman, host of Chicago’s Open Books Radio
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Before the Snow Moon
Ann Arbor, Michigan: Alice Greene & Company
Available in a limited, signed, fine-arts edition.
“Alison Swan makes the landscape come alive, illuminating the human within.” – Dan Gerber, author of Sailing through Cassiopeia
out of print – click here to read more about Before the Snow Moon
Dog Heart
Ann Arbor, Michigan: Alice Greene & Company
“The poems are so brave and luminous and rich and care about what we need to care about and draw us back to such.” – Jack Ridl, author of Losing Season
out of print – click here to read more about Dog Heart
The Saugatuck Dunes : Artists Respond to a Freshwater Landscape
Saugatuck, Michigan: Saugatuck Dunes Coastal Alliance
118 full-color pages of inspiration from 41 artists and 3 essayists
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Porch Swing
Ann Arbor, Michigan: Bloodroot Press
Limited edition, fine art book and letterpress broadside
click here to read more and to order the broadside
Selected Anthologies
Here: Women Writing on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Editor Ron Riekki, Foreword by Alison Swan
East Lansing, Michigan: Michigan State University Press
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Michigan: Our Land, Our Water, Our Heritage, Editor John Knott
Ann Arbor, Michigan: The Nature Conservancy/The University of Michigan Press
118 full-color pages of inspiration from 9 essayists, including Alison Swan, and 8 photographers
Out of print, you may find a used copy at Biblio.com