Water Signs - by Liz Kellebrew (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Written while riding the ferry across Puget Sound, Liz Kellebrew's poems explore the liminal places between cities and forests, animals and people, the sky and the sea. This gorgeous and impactful debut gazes unflinchingly at the twin crises of climate change and human hubris, urging us to look closer at the creatures who co-exist with us in the space between wild and tame.

Whether it's a salmon riding in the trough between waves, a cormorant flexing on a harbor buoy, a tourist on the ferry, or a toad on the ridge of a nebula somewhere in the Milky Way, we are prompted to ask, What is the wavelength of a soul? What new ways of being will emerge as our world changes? Will we embrace the bodies of the unknowable future?

With equal parts wonder and humor, Kellebrew calls our attention to the strangeness and beauty of nature and our place in it, inviting us to fall in love with this open book called living.

Review Quotes

Liz Kellebrew brings to her poetry the same high imagination and sense of mischief she invests in her fiction.

The first thing that came to my mind blurbing Liz's poems was that I am not worthy. I look but I barely see. Liz's poems observe deeply. They observe that the water is bluer than the sky, and that the ferry goes through a haze of mist, steely as guns and buoyant as toys. Here the metaphors are tools for looking at the world. Liz's imagination doesn't stop at observing, it also wishes. It wishes a pigeon to have the last popcorn seed under the seat. And it wishes for a sudden lovemaking that turns the world into sounds. These poems are omnisensual; they touch everything.

Liz Kellebrew has written some of my favorite new poems. Reading Water Signs is like watching for whales. You get charmed by her fresh takes on everyday sights and musings, such as the simple pleasure of being on the water. And then one of her big powerful poems suddenly blasts straight up out of nowhere and leaves you awestruck, marveling at how Hydrophilic Age, for example, ingeniously illuminates the end game of climate change in just 105 words!

In Water Signs, Liz Kellebrew reflects on her coastal landscape and the natural and unnatural ways we inhabit our lives. Humorous, illuminating, and unafraid to peel back the complicated layers of living, this collection probes as much as it cradles. Kellebrew asks, "How does one cope with the uncertainty?" Her answers are manifold and, ultimately, hopeful. "Extend that love to yourself: make your heart a homestead."

Lithe as shoreline madronas, Liz Kellebrew's poems navigate the Salish Sea in reflections on nature, everyday solitude, and a changing environment. Effortless imagery pairs with staunch insights to create a mesmerizing read.

In Water Signs, a startling, heartfelt, and brave catalogue of the world around us, Liz Kellebrew echoes Mary Oliver's instructions: "To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work." Whether describing the feral beauty of a post-apocalyptic landscape, taking inventory of her surroundings, or playing with the trope of a midlife crisis, Kellebrew's's language is lush and unrelenting, praising the clutter of human life as it intersects with natural world: "The sticky residue on a galley table, spilled juice or sticky bun. Scratched enamel, graffiti of keys," and "Sweetgum seeds cluster in fractals, / Spiny urchins ambitious as globes." The result is a voice tender as it is stoic, reminding us that there are, "No predators here but us."