Official Website of Author
Lisa hase-jackson
Insomnia in Another Town
Clemson University Press, 2024
From the opening poem of Lisa Hase-Jackson's impactful collection, Insomnia in Another Town, we learn that "There is no small grief...all are interconnected." These poems, cloaked in memory and the unmaking and re-making of family, travel us through the harvest of a poet's life. Like the farms she made grow, this book tills the soil of a human soul and all the many experiences that make it. In pantoums, free verse, and prose poems, Hase-Jackson demonstrates the way that every lived experience weaves into a root system that bears unique fruit, singular as our heartbeats, our winding fingerprints. -Ashley M. Jones, poet laureate of Alabama
Flint & Fire
The Word Works, 2019
Lisa Hase-Jackson strikes the flinty surfaces of living and ignites a fire that both clarifies and illuminates. Spanning divorce, single motherhood, individuality, and love, Flint & Fire is a collection that burns with brave and honest beauty.
about the author
Lisa Hase-Jackson is author of Fline & Fire (The Word Works, 2019), winner of the Hilary Tham Capital Collection prize, and Insomnia in Another Town (Clemson University Press), which won the Converse MFA Alumni Prize for Poetry.
Lisa’s poetry explores the complexities of interpersonal relationships and the opaque nature of family history tenderness and clarity while investigating place and displacement; animal life and strange weathers; the exigencies of race, class, and gender as childhood memories emit a dark radiance by which to navigate the present. Born in Portland, Oregon and raised in the Midwest and Southwest, Lisa currently lives in Charleston, South Carolina,
Poems
PROSE
FEATURING LISA
TESTIMONIALS
Insomnia in Another Town is a peripatetic exploration of place and displacement; animal life and strange weathers; the exigencies of race, class, and gender as childhood memories emit a dark radiance by which to navigate the present. These poems are quietly perceptive, unflinching: There is no small grief…/for all are/interconnected. One touch/sends tremors through our core/like the fly in the web/that wakes the spider at its center. Nevertheless, there’s significant courage here with grace notes of buoyancy as readers are reawakened to joy in bird song along the power lines/and between the tunes/on the radio,/the interstices/of thoughts/no one thinks about.
Claire Bateman,
Contest judge
From the opening poem of Lisa Hase-Jackson’s impactful collection, Insomnia in Another Town, we learn that “There is no small grief…all are interconnected.” These poems, cloaked in memory and the unmaking and re-making of family, travel us through the harvest of a poet’s life. Like the farms she made grow, this book tills the soil of a human soul and all the many experiences that make it. In pantoums, free verse, and prose poems, Hase-Jackson demonstrates the way that every lived experience weaves into a root system that bears unique fruit, singular as our heartbeats, our winding fingerprints.
Ashley M. Jones,
Poet laureate of Alabama
Insomnia in Another Town is a remarkable meditation about memory, mother-daughter relationships, and the opaque nature of family history, whether in the form of rumor, hearsay, or as one poem’s narrator puts it, “I’ve heard it both ways.” With profound clarity and tenderness, Hase-Jackson blends elegy, pop culture, and our fears around dying as a way to explore an array of human experiences, such as when “being broke felt more like being poor,” alongside the everyday miracles of how “luck becomes blooms becomes beans,” ultimately revealing what can and cannot be mended.
Esther Lee
EVENTS
EVENTS DETAILS:
Details for the March 19th reading are as follows:
Converse Visiting Writer: Lisa Hase-Jackson
Tuesday, March 19, 2024 , 4:00pm
Location:
Converse University
580 E Main St., Spartanburg, SC
DESCRIPTION:
Join us for a reading by Lisa Hase-Jackson. Hase-Jackson is the winner of the Converse MFA Alumni Book Prize for her book Insomnia in Another Town, published by Clemson University Press as part of the Clemson-Converse Literature Series. Lisa is the author of the poetry collections Flint & Fire, recipient of the Hillary Tham Poetry Prize, and Insomnia in Another Town.
The reading is free and open to the public. Hosted by the BFA in Creative and Professional Writing.
This event will be held in Room 201 in the Milliken Fine Arts Building.
The book cover image is attached. Here are the blurbs from the judge and other poets: