Mary Ricketson

Advance praise for STUTTERSMary Ricketson's new book of poems-Stutters-is accurate as a chickadee's chirp or an arrow's sting. The poet creates a legacy varied as the soil's grains scattering from opening fingers.-Shelby Stephenson was poet laureate of North Carolina from 2015-2018. His recent books are Country and Praises.Mary Ricketson invokes the inner courage of a personal difference seeking to come to light. Her poetry warms our hearts with its raw passion and fear, its joys and sorrows. As told over the course of her lifetime, she shares her stories within the voice of a stutterer, bringing us into her realm. Mary shines a light on what it's like to want to speak but often having to change her pattern or her words or even avoiding speaking at all, for fear of what might or might not emerge from her lips and throat. Mary's humility shines through in this book of poetry, as does her bravery, charm, and wit.As a speech language pathologist with over 26 years of clinical practice, I can attest to Mary Ricketson's hard-earned fluency today. As a colleague working with Mary with a local non-profit, I can attest to her dedication to women and to voices often not heard. Hearing Mary speak and recite her poetry is a time-stand-still kind of experience. Her canter draws you in, and though there is an occasional stutter or repetition, she has a bravery that elevates her through the moment and onto further words and prose. This is a most unique book of poetry. When I read her words on these pages, I feel she is here speaking them aloud to me in her own beautiful, passionate, and fluent, as well as disfluent, way.-Emory E Prescott, PhD, MS, CCC-SLP, author of The Herbal BrainMary Ricketson's book, Stutters, A Book of Hope, takes the reader through Ricketson's journey of fear and frustration. Every word is a struggle in school. "Children tease, mock, mimic...copy my dreaded stutter." Ricketson suffers shame "tension grows like weeds." This book pulls at your heart's strings. It's honest and fascinating. Her voice finally responds to practicing rhythm and she finds peace in the healing power of nature. Ricketson's courage and strength shine through the pages. This book is informative and an amazing story of a woman who overcomes the storms of life. Ricketson writes with candor about her son who also stutters. Families struggling in the shadows of stuttering will find hope in this collection of poems.-Brenda Kay Ledford, MA; Retired Educator; Author of: Blanche, Poems of a Blue Ridge Woman and Leatherwood Falls, Blue Ridge Mountain PoemsIn Mary Ricketson's latest poetry book she shares with us a look at her personal life. At the age of seven Mary began stuttering as she tried to speak. She allows us to see the pain and embarrassment it caused her. Yet, despite this obstacle, she was determined to push past it and achieve her goals. Mary completed college, became a counselor and a poet. She has excelled in both places, thus helping and inspiring many people. This is a special read. -Glenda Barrett, author of When the Sap Rises, and The Beauty of Silence.BioMary Ricketson's published collections are I Hear the River Call My Name, Hanging Dog Creek, Shade and Shelter, Mississippi: The Story of Luke and Marian, Keeping in Place, and Lira, Poems of a Woodland Woman, and Precious the Mule. She won first place in the 2011 Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest 75th anniversary national poetry contest.Mary's poems reflect the healing powers of nature, path she follows from Appalachian tradition, surrounding mountains as midwife for her words. She is a mental health therapist in private practice in Murphy NC and likes her writing groups, hiking mountain trails, and her garden of vegetables, flowers, and blueberries.

In Keeping in Place, Mary Ricketson pays homage to the natural world she loves, securing emotions she treasures. Her identity flourishes as she longs for the end of Pandemic. On her walks, she salutes the cow, the mule, the plants, and a hemlock she tunes to Survival. -Shelby Stephenson, Poet Laureate of North Carolina, 2015-2018, author of Slavery and Freedom on Paul's Hill and MoreMary Ricketson with her intense love for nature and mountain life has found a way in her book to interweave these beautiful images with the seriousness and isolation of the Corona Virus, a remarkable task to be sure. Mary stays focused on the landscape around her, as she recovers fromthe virus. -Glenda Barrett, author of When the Sap Rises, and The Beauty of SilenceMary Ricketson's Keeping in Place is one of the first of a new generation of poems inspired by the global pandemic of 2020, and it invites the reader to find balance, if not solace, in the always-already sacred act of recognizing and naming what is: blueberries, loneliness, empty clotheslines before an empty house, communion with cows, an ankle that "loves near naked bone", the "go-it-alone and wish for flight" that accompany the fearful positive test result. Pandemic, we learn here, "turns eye to another beauty / sutures half lives to each other." Observing the hemlocks struggling in the parasitic grip of the woolly adelgid, Ricketson considers what it means to be alive in each moment even while dying. The poet, like the reader, does not get to escape or transcend covid-19, but by the grace of her words, connecting poet and reader alike to the wider scope of the nonhuman, she is able to know it, name it, and live into and through it. In the face of this knowing, the poet "unfettered.../...walk s] west and wait s] for the sun to set", as we all must. This is the book which can help us to do it well. -Catherine Carter, author of The Memory of Gills, The Swamp Monster at Home, and Larvae of the Nearest Stars, professor of English, Western Carolina UniversityKeeping in Place is a collection of poems where the speaker, stricken by COVID, turns her focus to nature, drinks in the magic of the mountains and absorbs the "wisdom of walnuts." Her main companion is none other than a young cow, who wears a "yellow bell of a necktie." Solo, ill, and counting the days since she's been touched, the speaker still makes the reader chuckle after waking to a stinkbug for a lover, or being chased by a chicken. Ultimately, both the speaker and the reader grow "past first lonely, past the longings" to a new awareness of being, brought on by the pain and forced solitude of COVID. These are poems that can be filmed, and the reader will walk away with the beauty of the natural world emblazoned on them. -Rosemary R. Royston, author of Splitting the Soil

Mary Ricketson's Shade and Shelter I cherish for its naturalness, the words as wind, sometimes wild, sometimes caring, always solid as a stone-wall at sunset, real as the dirt beneath the feet, ephemeral as one monarch butterfly. Shelby Stephenson, Poet Laureate of North Carolina, 2015-2018 author of Elegies for Small Game, Press 53, Paul's Hill: Homage to Whitman, Sir Walter Press, and winner of the Roanoke-Chowan Award. In Mary Ricketson's Shade and Shelter, the speaker eloquently ponders "how the world ticks / and what to do with her] one chance" in a bold, nature-filled voice. Poison ivy, trillium, past hurts, new loves all appear and are seen, wide-eyed and with bravery, as the reader vicariously travels along the trail, "too narrow for two." Rosemary Royston, author of Splitting the Soil, Finishing Line Press In Mary Ricketson's aptly named collection, Shade and Shelter, "all four winds blow wild" the winds of remembrance, confrontation, acceptance and healing. Ricketson brings us along on her journey into nature as that windy place where "a million ferns hold hope for the future". As do these poems. Dana Wildsmith, author of One Good Hand, Iris Press, Back to Abnormal, Motes Books, and Jumping, Ink Brush Press