April and Back Again

Midway through April and Back Again, Claire Taylor asks herself, "Where is the line between hope and stupidity?"Tracking the final year of her thirties from April 2024 through April 2025, Claire Taylor's debut poetry collection is an intimate portrait of loving and living against a backdrop of existential dread. Deftly oscillating between quotidian scenes of family life and the anxiety of raising children amid the realities of climate change, gun violence, and a democracy on the verge of demise, Taylor leads us through the ups and downs of a year that was history in the making. Simultaneously marveling at the magic of watching her children grow and witnessing the horror of a country going, literally and figuratively, down in flames, April and Back Again follows Taylor from the pleasures of life's little moments into the growing depths of her own despair.Full of quiet meditations, heartfelt introspection, and delightful hints of humor, April and Back Again is like the first hopeful signs of spring after a long, cold winter.