Poetry

"Spoken word artist, Clarise Annette Brooks has captured her bold and powerful thoughts and ideas on paper in her new book, Excuse Me While I Live My Life. Her themes of mindfulness and responsibility will resonate with readers striving to build a better life for themselves and their surrounding community."

-Hugh Minor, Hey Rhody Magazine

Clarise Annette Brooks is proud to have had a multi-decade career as an educator. Stemming from Queens, New York, she currently lives in Rhode Island with her husband Alexander, their two children Alexa Claire and Daniel Gervais, and their dog, Percy.

Writing has always been a love of hers and she is pleased to share her first book with you

In her free time she enjoys baking, going for long walks beside the ocean, watching old movies and documentaries, browsing through bookstores, listening to interesting podcasts, travelling, and of course, reading poetry.

The lyrics in Sue Standing's False Horizon quietly celebrate the lust that is living, the lust that is memory. These poems, some of which are set in the far reaches of Africa and India, argue for the primacy of the present tense, a present tense that shines erotically out from under the beautiful drapery of a manifold rich and cultural world history. Therefore, False Horizons is a book full of sensations. Standing writes a wonderfully understated poetry about the intimacies of experience. She says, "I need a life that won't diminish."

In his long-awaited second book of poems, Quintin Prout re-invents, in the spirit of our truest poets, the common language of English speakers to meet his needs in expressing his experience. In fact, he goes as far as to re-assign words their parts of speech, as his experience requires. In his hands, the noun fatherhood becomes a verb. As is the case with so much in this world that is "assigned" (race, sex, and so on), the language on the tip of our tongue has to tell the truth that lies in the heart; thus fatherhood is not a thing but a verb, active and even transformative. Such a "reassignment" affirms our freedom to be ourselves, as poetry at its best always does, within the limits of our common language. As father and daughter interact in poem after poem, this witty, heartfelt, instructive book shows us fatherhood in action, and the lucky reader who happens on it will be grateful for its exemplary, original voice.

"Michael's book of poetry is an act of courage and of beauty. In Finding My Voice, Michael uses poems to render the experience of living with aphasia with tenderness, frustration, and eloquence. Aphasia changes our relationship to words, as both Michael and I know all too well. And yet a changed relationship is not a broken one, just like a life redirected by a singular traumatic event is not a broken one. Michael epitomizes so beautifully finding purpose in hardship, and I'm so grateful for the gift of this unforgettable collection of poems." -Gabby Giffords, former Congresswoman

"Finding My Words is a gift to the world. Michael Obel-Omia's voice is so important; it is so hard to express oneself with Aphasia. I trembled with familiarity reading many of the poems. Anyone who wants to understand aphasia-whether you have it or not-should read this book." -Debra Meyerson, PhD. Professor, Stanford University; Author of Identity Theft: Rediscovering Ourselves After Stroke

"Finding My Words is an astonishing, humbling, extraordinary and stunning collection. It speaks to the resiliency of the human spirit and should be required reading for everyone involved with the aphasia community as well as anyone with an appreciation of poetry as a means of expression. Michael Obel-Omia immerses the reader into the vortex of aphasia, challenging, teaching, and inspiring us along the way as he sheds light on this little known and often misunderstood condition." -Jerome Kaplan, MA, CCC-SLP Speech-language pathologist