Lucia Perillo on Disability, Poetry, and Nature

Good news. Lucia Perillo, one of my very favourite contemporary poets, has a new book coming out from Trinity University Press next spring. This new offering will be a book of essays entitled Ground Truth: On Disability, Poetry, and Nature. These are topics about which Perillo has more intimate knowledge than the average person. As one of America's finest poets she is at home in the world of letters, but Perillo is equally familiar with the wild and woolly grandeur of the great outdoors. Armed with a degree in wildlife management from McGill University, she once worked as a park ranger at Mount Rainier National Park and as a naturalist for the San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge. It was her diagnosis with MS in the mid-1980s that diverted her career toward more literary pursuits. Unfortunately, we'll have to wait until next May for the release of Ground Truth, though it can be pre-ordered in both Canada and the United States. Until then, Perillo's most recent collection of poems, Luck is Luck, much like her previous works, is still a book to read and to return to.