Oubliettes of Light

The poems in Lisa Ashley's debut collection are knock your-socks-off good. They are simultaneously lyrical and narrative. The stories are dramatic but are told delicately, with a crystalline economy of words. The poems hit home in the heart and their wisdom remains there. As Ashley says, "There is no such thing as a whole story" yet these poems tell a story so beautifully as to make the reader feel whole.

-Lillo Way, author of Lend Me Your Wings

There is a striking particularity to the poems in Oubliettes of Light, a grounding in the actual world that allows each scene to spring to life on the page. Lisa Ashley masterfully guides us back into childhood and family history to shed light on generational trauma and abuse, often moving deftly between past and present, light and shadow. Each of these poems is a bright window in the night, "beaconing" us toward our own healing, and long after I have finished reading them, I still "feel their silent pull like a prayer."

-James Crews, author of Unlocking the Heart: Writing for Mindfulness, Courage & Self-Compassion

These are embodied poems where voices of ancestors "roost" inside a child, break windowpanes of silence, and fill heavy buckets, where childhood memories sashay to Glenn Miller or crackle like bacon rashers in a skillet, where peace is "feral as a fox at dusk." Bodies are in peril here-subject to predation, at risk of war or imprisonment-but in Oubliettes of Light, Lisa Ashley generously gathers it all in, and not a petal escapes without a "clamor of joy."

-Bethany Reid, author of Sparrow and The Pear Tree