Thaw
Poems
by Chelsea Dingman
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Pub Date Sep 15 2017 | Archive Date Sep 08 2017
Description
Thaw delves into the issues at the core of a resilient family: kinship, poverty, violence, death, abuse, and grief. The poems follow the speaker, as both mother and daughter, as she travels through harsh and beautiful landscapes in Canada, Sweden, and the United States. Moving through these places, she examines how her surroundings affect her inner landscape; the natural world becomes both a place of refuge and a threat. As these themes unfold, the histories and cold truths of her family and country intertwine and impinge on her, even as she tries to outrun them.
Unflinching and raw, Chelsea Dingman’s poems meander between childhood and adulthood, the experiences of being a mother and a child paralleling one another. Her investigation becomes one of body, self, woman, mother, daughter, sister, and citizen, and of what those roles mean in the contexts of family and country.
A Note From the Publisher
Chelsea Dingman is a graduate instructor at the University of South Florida.
Advance Praise
“Thaw announces the beginning of a poetic career readers of poetry will be following for the ages, because Dingman is a poet for the ages. The sheer beauty of her poems, with their tremendous lyric power, will make a believer out of you. Her work takes those difficult moments we experience in silence and in grief and gives them imagistic force so sharp and detailed that we, as readers, are tempted to look away. But we don’t, because this poet’s siren song is one we can’t help but listen to, despite the hard truths on display.”
—Allison Joseph, poet, editor, and author of My Father's Kites: Poems
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9780820351315 |
| PRICE | $19.95 (USD) |
| PAGES | 96 |
Featured Reviews
Lori S, Reviewer
Thaw is a truly lovely collection of works. The author eloquently refines our existence by empowering nature's blessings to describe and protect us.
Joseph S, Reviewer
Thaw: Poems by Chelsea Dingman is the poet’s first published collection. Dingman teaches at the University of South Florida. She is originally from British Columbia, Canada. Dingman has lived in four countries and countless cities in North America. She currently resides in Tampa, Florida with her husband and two small children.
Dingman’s collection of poetry centers on the poet’s relationship as a mother and daughter. With that being said, most of the poetry was outside of my male range of interest being neither mother or daughter nor even a having a daughter. Despite the subject matter, I saw something amazing in the writing. Although appearing as neatly formed lines and stanzas, Dingman manages to work line breaks and stanzas in a creative manner. Several times, I saw a stanza end with a word, or perhaps a phrase, that seemed to end the line. Although it physically ends one line it also served as the beginning of the next. The single word performed a double duty. It is almost reflective in nature.
…Great pines resting their heads
against the sky. The colours
at dawn, sweet chill in the summer
grass before early snows. When I return,
…
— “Revenant”
“The colours” seems to draw the reader back the green of the pines against the blue of the sky and at the same time taking the reader to the violet, blue, red, and yellow of dawn. She repeats that again with the next line with a morning chill, even in summer, and summer grass.
Not all the poems carry that particularly feminine theme I mentioned above. There are poems of loss and death as well as poems that reflect a connection to nature. Although not particularly my type of poetry, the writing style and use of the written form kept me reading and searching for new discoveries. This is a collection where poetic form captured and held my attention rather than the topic.
liana p, Reviewer
Thaw is a debut poetry collection by Chelsea Dingman, a collection about loss, violence, and poverty, abuse, and family. It is a deeply emotional collection, one that hits you right in the gut. Alternating between childhood and adulthood, being a mother and being a child, Dingman skillfully uses her surroundings and environment as a projection of her soul; her thoughts and herself are deeply affected by the different environments she finds herself into, with her mind working almost as a mirror of her surroundings.
Her line breaks do not necessarily follow her sentences, a characteristic of her art that separates her from other artists. Her themes, her narrative, even the way she chooses to show her story make her unique and irreplaceable. Dingman and her work made me realize, once again, how much I love free verse poetry. I actually believe it’s harder to write than regular poetry (the one that actually rhymes), and I find it much more satisfying. Its inner rhythms and pacing can be manipulated into making you feel angry, sad, even happy, nostalgic or euphoric. It has a certain strength and power within it that I admire, and I found Dingman’s work to be a prime example of modern free verse poetry. Definitely an artist I’ll keep an eye out for.
Nathaniel D, Media/Journalist
Overall an effective collection of poetry. I felt like it really started with an especially strong poem and maintained a decent level of good writing throughout.
Samantha A, Reviewer
This might be one of the best books of story telling in poetry format that I've read since Diane Gilliam Fisher published <i>Kettle Bottom</i> in 2004. It was beautifully written, and I loved the change of pace from childhood to adult/motherhood. This book really delves deep into family issues such a loss, poverty, and even darker subjects that people sometimes prefer to skirt around. Her writing is exquisite, and I loved her descriptive way of really putting you into the moment. I would love to read more by this author in the future, and I hope she released future poetry collections down the line!
Michelle K, Reviewer
Thaw
Poems
by Chelsea Dingman
University of Georgia Press
Poetry
Pub Date 15 Sep 2017
I am reviewing a copy of Thaw through University of Georgia Press and Netgalley:
Poetry is one of the most difficult subjects to Review as they in the most cases by their very definition are personal, spelling out, thoughts and emotions.
This collection of poetry is raw and the poems herein tare at your very soul, some of these poems deal with the death, including the loss of children. It deals with molestation, suicides, hits and runs, this short collection of poetry is not short on its impact.
The books in this collection by Chelsea Dingman alternates from her childhood and adulthood paralleling her life as a child to that of her children, it speaks not only of sorrow and loss, but of determination and overcoming.
I give Thaw five out of five stars!
Happy Reading!
Richard L, Reviewer
Another book of poetry I have enjoyed where words carry you to other places and briefly trap you in their light.
There is much to enjoy here with ideas captured in bold similes and graphic situations. Full of the world of nature. The power of the weather, the vast sky and the changing presence of water.
Reflecting the seasons, and the harshness of life with the pain of relationships, loss and death.
I enjoyed a number of poems, but the quality here could mean my favourites will change on a second reading. The book falls into two parts and I will focus on part 1 to allow yourself to better enjoy the whole.
'The Last Place' stood out for me and I'll quote from others to give you a taste. A number of lines could illustrate my point but Chelsea's femininity struck in in these lines. 'Daughter, Released "That I have to find what comes from darkness before anything good can stay"; one from part 2 'Prayer for an Unnamed Child' "I want to be a man, forget my womb "; 'Borderlands' "...September's teeth in my mother's knees. " and 'In Ten Years' "she waits for people she no longer knows,"
And from the world of nature these great lines: ''Sirens' " I held the wind in my throats like a song" and 'After the Tornado, Summer 1989' "I scratch the mud soaked earth with a stick until it bleeds water"
My final thought is read more poetry please.
Librarian 299542
I had never read Dingman's poetry before. The themes found within these pages were not light, but I loved the various settings and the fact that her treatment of nature had shades of Mary Oliver. I look forward to reading more poems by her and to other books in the National Poetry Series.
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