The poems in this collection reflect Gregg Valenzuela's passion for the history, rural culture, land and the people of Virginia's Tidewater and Northern Neck. Like his poetry, this singular place reveals a multitude of layers, textures, moods, as well as a rare and unforgettable beauty.

Over twenty years ago my mother, Bonnie Ashworth, passed along to me an old, worn ledger book. The book contained poetry written over one hundred and fifty years ago by her great-great-grandfather and passed down to her by her Grandmother, Caroline Billingham Bentz (Grandpa MurphyÕs granddaughter.) The family possessed several pictures of the author, but no one in the clan could remember precisely who this lyrical ancestor was. He was known to the family as simply ÒGrandpa Murphy.Ó The acquisition of this family heirloom marked the beginning of my long search for the identity of the mysterious Grandpa Murphy, and my family history in general; a search that would ultimately lead me to a small historical society basement on the Northern Neck of Virginia where many of my questions began to be answered.

Profound spaces-places, moments, and people-mold the spirit of every person. Jaren Hailey was shaped by the memories of her mother's family, born on her grandparents' farm in Northern Neck Virginia, Lancaster County, in the town of Kilmarnock. The love and lessons learned in these profound spaces of her life shaped her poetry and gave this volume its name.Corn stalks, a dog's fleas, well water, Capt'in Luther Doggett White, red clover tea, a southern field hand, and the magnificent Northern Neck Virginia Queen-Jaren takes the reader to the essence of each, capturing its sorrow, its joy, or its humor.

Neck of the World is the eleventh volume in the prestigious May Swenson Poetry Award series. In it, Daniel Rzicznek offers poems that, in quick angular language, capture the natural world and at the same time extend it into a surreal vision, sometimes dream-like, sometimes dark. Alice Quinn, judge for the 2007 Swenson Award, says this of Rzicznek’s work: “Throughout, the language pulsates, always vigorous, by turns knotty and crystalline. . . . In Neck of the World, we have a poet with a striking new vision--challenging, rewarding, and bold."

In her fourth full-length book, White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia, Kiki Petrosino turns her gaze to Virginia, where she digs into her genealogical and intellectual roots, while contemplating the knotty legacies of slavery and discrimination in the Upper South. From a stunning double crown sonnet, to erasure poetry contained within DNA testing results, the poems in this collection are as wide-ranging in form as they are bountiful in wordplay and truth. In her poem 'The Shop at Monticello,' she writes: 'I’m a black body in this Commonwealth, which turned black bodies/ into money. Now, I have money to spend on little trinkets to remind me/ of this fact. I’m a money machine & my body constitutes the common wealth.' Speaking to history, loss, and injustice with wisdom, innovation, and a scientific determination to find the poetic truth, White Blood plants Petrosino’s name ever more firmly in the contemporary canon.

Over twenty years ago my mother, Bonnie Ashworth, passed along to me an old, worn ledger book. The book contained poetry written over one hundred and fifty years ago by her great-great-grandfather and passed down to her by her Grandmother, Caroline Billingham Bentz (Grandpa MurphyÕs granddaughter). The family possessed several pictures of the author, but no one in the clan could remember precisely who this lyrical ancestor was. He was known to the family as simply ÒGrandpa Murphy.Ó The acquisition of this family heirloom marked the beginning of my long search for the identity of the mysterious Grandpa Murphy, and my family history in general; a search that would ultimately lead me to a small historical society basement on the Northern Neck of Virginia where many of my questions began to be answered.

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