Books
The Northway
Published 2018 by Terrapin Books.
Available:
Barnes & Noble
Amazon
Terrapin Bookstore.
"Wild Pansy" selected for Pushcart Prize, 2020 Anthology.
"Yoho" selected for United Nations Network on Migration 2022 photography and poetry exhibition, "It's Only the End of the World." migrationnetwork.un.org/Exhibition2022?fbclid=IwAR3D9390ojqF-KX0MAPU8yEo2JjhsJtDdcajCvHa7KeK5gzw5o38xnCDIWM
"The Not-so-Foreign Lifecycle of a Perennial - the poetry of Lisa Bellamy"
www.mississippivalleyconservancy.org/wild-reads/poetry-review-not-so-foreign-lifecycle-perennial-poetry-lisa-bellamy
"All Saints Day" will appear in 2024 in The Heartbeat of the Universe: Poems from Asimov's Science Fiction and Analog Science Fiction and Fact 2021-2022, ed. Emily Hockaday. The poem was among featured poems in Asimov's Science Fiction April 2020 National Poetry Month podcast. www.podomatic.com/podcasts/asimovs/episodes/2020-04-14T09_28_02-07_00
"Not So Easy, Saving Sentient Beings," was the featured Verse Daily poem, January 27, 2020.
"Woodchuck-a-Phobia" was among among featured poems in Passager's "Groundhog Day 2021 "Burning Bright" podcast.
www.passagerbooks.com/burning-bright/
"Black-eyed Susan" selected for Special Mention, Pushcart Prize, 2018 Anthology.
"Cow Psalm," "Our Fathers," and "God is an Old Pear," nominated for Pushcart Prize, 2020 Anthology.
"My Sweet Little Pigeons" won a Fugue Poetry Prize.
"Obit" featured on The Writer's Almanac, April 5, 2019
www.garrisonkeillor.com/radio/twa-the-writers-almanac-for-april-5-2019/
Excerpts from The Northway in Cagibi Summer 2018
cagibilit.com/the-northway-excerpt-lisa-bellamy/
"Why I Will Not Sell the Undeveloped Parcel" reprinted in Adirondac, Nov. / Dec. 2019
"This hilarious, imaginative book packs cigarette butts, Buddhist prayer flags, a spastic colon, Leviathan jaws, and gnats reincarnating as neonatal nurses into just one poem. Others say “Yes, to grunts and drooling”; find a Zen master in a bobcat spotted while driving; and experience an epiphany while driving with closed eyes. Bellamy’s humor is a lens exposing our foibles, fears, and loveliness. Her unstinting, self-implicating humor skewers culture, “I eat only fresh, locally sourced sadness,” and politics, religion, gender roles, and relationships, “swinging [her] axe at the root of delusion.”
April Ossmann, Event Boundaries
"Lisa Bellamy's The Northway delves not only into nature with its moles and mites, wild pansies and clouds of white crickets, but also deeply into the nature of what it means to be human: marriage, alcoholism, sexting, and biopsies. For Bellamy, it seems, anything can--and must--go into a poem. Beautifully crafted, her litanies and juxtapositions aren't afraid to wrestle with the hard stuff, but ultimately, they offer us what we all want: to land on our feet and get a little TLC. Nicole Callihan, Superloop
"It's impossible to stop quoting Lisa Bellamy's marvelous poems in her mesmerizing book, The Northway. Impossible because the language, imagery, and passionate imagination are irresistible, absolutely so. Hers is a world of spiritual and magical wonders, adorning wild pansies, squishy roads, sly, frilly-hatted debutante bees, black-eyed Susans confessing rather sexy stories of life among the peepers where bark-eaters are all walking north, "surviving yet another frozen night." I could go on and if there's any fairness in this world, I will. Believe me, I will."
Philip Schultz, 2008 Pulitzer Prize winner
"Here’s the question you will ask yourself as you read Lisa Bellamy’s The Northway: how does she do it? How does she convey such an upbeat—even goofy—persona when she is clearly an artist who has done some critical thinking? Hers is not insignificant, lah-de-dah verse from a superficial writer. It is skillful, deep, and for a squeamishly sober person like myself, shockingly delightful in its hilarity. Reading her work makes me feel the way I felt when the Dalai Lama came to Ithaca—light, sure, and bound to my fellow creature."
Judith Swann, Compulsive Reader
www.compulsivereader.com/2018/12/02/a-review-of-the-northway-by-lisa-bellamy/
"She has created a sometimes tender, often brash speaker who embraces both the unknown and every step of the journey she limns in these energetic and imaginative poems...Throughout the fast-paced, imaginative poems of The Northway, Lisa Bellamy provides an apt vehicle for the sturdy heroine I think of as Lucy. There is indeed "nothing soft or vague" about this feisty narrator. With her spirit guides and her own fierce determination, Lucy trusts her inner compass and the power of her journey—even with her eyes closed."
Jeri Theriault, The Collagist
thecollagist.com/the-collagist/2018/11/27/the-northway-by-lisa-bellamy.html?fbclid=IwAR2qylm2siWPoVtvdz-xVPog2yFlH6EWZBR7MdRoL4L7tD6SVM6Eb3KrSIw
"Lisa Bellamy’s collection of poems, “The Northway,” is a boisterous, rollicking, often bawdy frolic as she encounters bears, groundhogs, pigeons, and her own self and soul in the world. Desire, memory, fear, addiction and enlightenment are among the big subjects explored in these lively poems. If you think you don’t like poetry, this book might change your mind."
Marilyn McCabe, The Adirondack Daily Enterprise
www.adirondackdailyenterprise.com/opinion/columns/read-in-the-blue-line/2019/02/lively-poems-in-new-collection/
"This may be Lisa Bellamy's first book, but in terms of her handling of voice, The Northway is a master class...Bellamy's voice is fresh and seemingly unafraid of breaking down any barries to communication....We need a Lisa Bellamy to help us relax a bit and listen to her sassy speakers traverse the contemporary scene, sounding very human indeed."
Claire Keyes, Whale Road Review
www.whaleroadreview.com/voice-lessons/
"Bellamy’s poetry defies description, because it’s so many things at once. She can go off on more tangents in a 30-line poem than a Southerner in a porch swing chatting away Sunday afternoon, yet her unique grab bag of topics and metaphors works. If her poems were a movie, we wouldn’t dare leave our seats."
Alarie Tennille, Cider Press Review
ciderpressreview.com/reviews/review-of-lisa-bellamys-the-northway/#.XLo9VZNKhmB
"Bellamy’s collection meets Coleridge’s definition of poetry: “The best words in the best order.” She is attentive to syntax, line length, and diction in a way that is unobtrusive and humble while simultaneously insightful and profound. "
Anne Graue, Glass: A Journal of Poetry
www.glass-poetry.com/journal/reviews/graue-bellamy.html?fbclid=IwAR0nuoVcwdAhCbZ4uKjMf8UxDZGGvMBT2BdpnkCE9gYzS78HrkZ6-eBdEwU
"...the first full-length collection by acclaimed poet and writing teacher Lisa Bellamy is a humorous as well as often moving set of fifty short poems..."
Neal Burdick, Adirondac
Finalist, 2018 Woodrow Hall Top Shelf Award
Nectar
Winner of the 2011 Encircle Publications chapbook contest.
Order directly from the author. Please use the contact form.
"Nectar" title poem first published in TriQuarterly:
Bees relinquish the cult of personality to extract nectar
from flower after flower, with long, elegant tongues,
motivated by far more than industry, duty.
They crave sudden pleasure, speed-of-light energy coursing,
exploding throughout their tiny bee torsos like uncut cocaine.
Nectar: from the Greek nek, death and tar, overcoming.
In the moment, they believe they are deathless,
radiant gods riding the wind, mouths open to updrafts,
lighting on infants’ foldy necks, smelling of newly-turned earth,
daisies, remnants of trilobites. They crown Sikh turbans like jewels,
suckle magnolia blossoms for the extravagant fun of it,
insert themselves mischievously under worn babushkas,
bee feet prickling a scalp like Neil Armstrong on the moon,
giddy, wings beating harder at the sound of a yelp--
don’t be surprised! Surely, we’ve learned gods are capricious.
Later, the garden grows dark, dirty wrappers blow against trash cans.
The bees press against the beating hearts of hummingbirds
who then fly away. The bees see they are alone,
absorbing the sadness pervading the universe.
All compounded things appear and then disappear, says the Buddha.
Through the night, they listen to the music of quasars
radiating grief with neither beginning nor end.
Mixing nectar with tears, the bees produce honey.
"The question that begins Lisa Bellamy's elegant and eloquent collection of poems is a poignant one: are we all 'just wind and gristle'? This skilled poet goes on to assure us that we are not...Sadness is everywhere...but like the bees 'mixing nectar with tears' to produce honey - so is joy." Eleanor Lerman, author of Strange Life, among other books and Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize winner.
"In Nectar, Lisa Bellamy covers some pretty dark subject matter, but she tackles it with a sense of irony and humor that makes for delightful reading." PANK Magazine review.
Winner of the 2011 Encircle Publications chapbook contest.
Order directly from the author. Please use the contact form.
"Nectar" title poem first published in TriQuarterly:
Bees relinquish the cult of personality to extract nectar
from flower after flower, with long, elegant tongues,
motivated by far more than industry, duty.
They crave sudden pleasure, speed-of-light energy coursing,
exploding throughout their tiny bee torsos like uncut cocaine.
Nectar: from the Greek nek, death and tar, overcoming.
In the moment, they believe they are deathless,
radiant gods riding the wind, mouths open to updrafts,
lighting on infants’ foldy necks, smelling of newly-turned earth,
daisies, remnants of trilobites. They crown Sikh turbans like jewels,
suckle magnolia blossoms for the extravagant fun of it,
insert themselves mischievously under worn babushkas,
bee feet prickling a scalp like Neil Armstrong on the moon,
giddy, wings beating harder at the sound of a yelp--
don’t be surprised! Surely, we’ve learned gods are capricious.
Later, the garden grows dark, dirty wrappers blow against trash cans.
The bees press against the beating hearts of hummingbirds
who then fly away. The bees see they are alone,
absorbing the sadness pervading the universe.
All compounded things appear and then disappear, says the Buddha.
Through the night, they listen to the music of quasars
radiating grief with neither beginning nor end.
Mixing nectar with tears, the bees produce honey.
"The question that begins Lisa Bellamy's elegant and eloquent collection of poems is a poignant one: are we all 'just wind and gristle'? This skilled poet goes on to assure us that we are not...Sadness is everywhere...but like the bees 'mixing nectar with tears' to produce honey - so is joy." Eleanor Lerman, author of Strange Life, among other books and Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize winner.
"In Nectar, Lisa Bellamy covers some pretty dark subject matter, but she tackles it with a sense of irony and humor that makes for delightful reading." PANK Magazine review.