in early light aubades

About 'in early light' (Kit Kelen, 2025)

These freewheeling Hopkinsesque, Dylanesque, fragmentary poems have the thrilling feeling of "the still wet canvas" of dawn with its "light that breaks down doors" and suddenly you see, waking again and again to the newness of world and "the firstliness of birds / born to the thin air chase". With gentle brushstrokes

Kelen "rubs back a primed sky" with an irradiating light: "It's just these little prints I leave / barest of impressions" he says, but what an impression these poems leave us indeed: "the practice of just where we are", the meditation of poet being poet being human being artist in this world right now - and how thankful I am for them.

- Anne Kellas

'There's weather in the head-its own world spinning': in this exquisite collection of aubades, award-winning poet Kit Kelen brings his signature inventiveness

and sidestepping of language convention, deep affinity with the natural world, metaphysical questioning and daily sunrise-inspired reveries to refresh the reader

over and over again at the altar of time and truth. The poems made me think and dream and want to scribble!

- Jane Frank

These radiant poems break the habits of words to wake us to the wonder of our senses. Steeped in hope, ringing with honesty and humanity, both grounded and

given to flight, these are poems to live by, each line a new kind of coming home.

- Renee Pettitt-Schipp