Sunni Wilkinson, The Marriage of the Moon and the Field, and Natalie Taylor, Eden's Edge

Weller Book Works is excited to welcome poet Sunni Wilkinson and Natalie Taylor as they read and sign The Marriage of the Moon and the Field and Eden’s Edge Tuesday, February 11, at 6:30 PM!

“The poems in Sunni Wilkinson’s The Marriage of the Moon and the Field show us history, affection, private struggle, and the common life with a kind of grave, irony-tinged happiness that is rare in the poetry of our time. Her poems turn away from complaint, as though she had set out to reveal instead the domestic life of intelligence in all its color, warmth, and depth. ” – Christopher Howell

“Sunni Brown Wilkinson’s poems sustain a compelling tension between the macro and micro worlds. Scientific facts of the physical realm collide with intimate interiorities. She turns a steely eye and a tender heart toward the experience of living fully in the rush of the NOW and the flickering echoes of what came before. These are lushly rendered poems to savor and/or to devour.”–Nance Van Winckel

Sunni Brown Wilkinson’s poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Crab Orchard Review, Adirondack Review, Sugar House Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and other journals and anthologies. She is the author of The Marriage of the Moon and the Field (Black Lawrence Press 2019), and her poem “Rodeo” won New Ohio Review’s inaugural NORward Poetry Prize. She teaches at Weber State University and lives in northern Utah with her husband and three young sons.

Eden’s Edge, a collection of poems by Natalie Taylor, explores the complexities in relationships—both with each other as humans and our relationship to the earth. The poems explore the themes of sensuality, shame, grief, and redemption lit with radiant natural imagery.

“I’m spinning sun to gold,” says the speaker of Natalie Taylor’s poem “Indeterminate Tomato,” and luckily for us, that gold includes these poems.  Like Voltaire’s Candide, Taylor finds fulfillment in the hard work of cultivating her garden, a trope for the self. She attends to the seasons, to natural phenomena, and to both the longing and gratitude for what the earth—and time—provide. “I have not earned my joy yet,” she says, but readers can access it through her lexical restraint and resonant images.  “Leave the lavender. New/ and not. I want. I want./Nothing. Want not.”

—Natasha Sajé, author of Vivarium

Natalie Taylor earned a BFA in English with a creative writing emphasis from the University of Utah. She is the author of the poetry chapbook, Eden’s Edge. Her work has been published in 15 Bytes, Hubbub, Kettle Blue Review, New Ohio Review, Rock & Sling, and the Talking River. She won first place in the 2016 Utah Original Writing competition and was named a 2017 Mari Sandoz Emerging Writer: Poetry.