Laura E. Garrard

My debut book and contest placing chapbook is available for preorder through Finishing Line Press.

This is the time to buy! For one, you’ll receive $2 off the retail cost and receive a signed bookplate sticker. Secondly, you will boost my royalties, or my percentage of earnings, on sales. And, your sales in this period will determine if I’m allowed to sell a Kindle version and hardback version (important for bookstore sales and library shelves). Plus, Preorder sales affect the print run amount! Wow, the power you wield!

Here is what is being said about this book:

Laura E. Garrard’s poems are courageous compass-settings for navigating a place of balance and bodily, emotional and spiritual contending. She is fighting a life threatening cancer in language both nuanced and frontal. “Living is precious / The trick is / Not wanting it too much / Not calling death closer.” I finished the book feeling greatly uplifted. Its cargo is a true teaching of how to live daily on the shifting edge of our own mortality and that of those we love.

—Tess Gallagher, author of Is, Is Not

In her chapbook poetry collection, Paddling the Sweet Spot Between Life and Death, the first line of Laura E. Garrard’s poem, “Humbled,” reads I am cleaved by lightning. Garrard navigates a world of illness, the inherent fears of death that are overcome by an instinct for survival, the gripping complexities within the process of healing. The experiences of these poems by Laura E. Garrard reveal that for every corridor of grief there are as many rooms of sustaining light, and that is very human, that’s being much alive.

—Gary Copeland Lilley, poet and author of Raven on the Moaners’ Bench and The Bushman’s Medicine Show

Kudos to Laura E. Garrard for writing honest poems that question the familiar trope of vanquishing cancer, asking: “Why fight against / Death as if it were a foe?” Instead, Garrard listens to her body with compassion, embarking on a journey to bring her life into balance and find that “sweet spot of flow called letting go.” These vivid, sensory poems take us along as she swims in the wake of spotted dolphins, sees messages in barn swallows at play, and listens to alders at the edge of the lake where she finds peace. In the end, we arrive at her epiphany with gratitude for her hard-earned wisdom: “The closer we are to the glass door of death / The freer we are to cornerstone live.” 

 —Holly J. Hughes, author of Passings, winner of an American Book Award

Drum roll…Link to purchase Online»

Or if you want to purchase with a check or money order, you may mail this form to Finishing Line Press. If you choose this route, there is a discount on shipping when you preorder more than one copy. Download a printable order form here (Word and PDF versions):

Want more info? Here is a full book description and sample reading:

This honest modern poetic response to a life-threatening rare cancer inspires present living and connection to nature, and contains multiple award-winning poems, including a Pushcart Prize nomination.

Paddling the Sweet Spot Between Life and Death is a poignant contemporary poetry collection that shows “for every corridor of grief there are as many rooms of sustaining light,” said Gary Copeland Lilley, author of The Bushman’s Medicine Show. Laura E. Garrard’s vulnerable narratives capture indelible moments in which cancer patients struggle and overcome. Garrard seeks meaning in “the narrow exception of movement against the current,” the shock of a terminal blood cancer diagnosis, multiple myeloma. On her shins, she asks God, “What is a human without honor?” She connects to the natural world and expresses her pain, joy and absolution. “I am cleaved by lightning. / Bared of bark, my proud / Leaves, trimmed limbs. / Burned to minimal – / Survival instinct.”

Garrard rides her paddleboard on Lake Crescent in Olympic National Park, where the edges of waves provide a tenable path through rough water. Garrard’s free-spoken style shows us a determined “gracious woman” who refuses to hand over her “life, body and self-sufficiency” to anyone or anything. Then, she softens to find the “sweet spot of flow called letting go.” “I push less, soothe with balm, / and soak pain in salty water / to lithe what has been burned.” The book’s last, and Pushcart Prize–nominated, poem, “Hugging Alder,” speaks to the losses that we share in life on our way to death, including the changes we’re observing in our environment. Garrard dispels stigmas associated with chronic illness, asserting, “I may never win your cancer-free ribbon, yet my pages still turn.” We live more fully in the shadow of this book’s confrontation with ableism.

According to Tess Gallagher, recipient of the International Lifetime Achievement Award in Poetry from the Academy of Rome, this book uplifts and inspires. She said, “Its cargo is a true teaching of how to live daily on the shifting edge of our own mortality and that of those we love.”

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Thank you for wielding your purchasing power and supporting the success of my chapbook.

I hope that it serves many who may feel alone in their health experiences, and gives voice to the chronically ill, the unexpected in our lives – an artistic way of continuing through challenging times.

P. S. Finishing Line offers the opportunity to review. A review tab is provided on the bookstore page. If you would like to review my book during presales, contact me at garrardpoet@lauraegarrard.com.

P.S.S. Also, I am happy to share one copy of the manuscript with organizations that would like to preorder multiple copies (book clubs included) so that they may review it before selection or suggesting it to their members. Reviewers may also contact me for a pre-release manuscript.