In The Conjurer Keeps House, Mary Redman invites the reader into the mind of an aging woman to explore life’s joys, sorrows, and discoveries. Her poems display a love of the natural world and immersion in it for the sake of physical and mental health, as well as poetic inspiration. One message of this book is that a mindful attitude toward the present and critical reflection on the past can lead to acceptance and the knowledge that each of us is part of something more significant than any individual life could embody. #poetry #chapbook #aging gracefully #nature #memory #sorrow #joy #discovery #reflection #mindfulness Instagram: @redmanmarye Facebook: @maryelizabethredman
Mary Redman is a writer from Indiana. She graduated from Ball State University majoring in Art Education and English, later earning her M.A. in English there, as well. Her teaching career spanned thirty-three years, primarily teaching high school English. After retiring from teaching, Mary worked as a university supervisor for the Schools of Education at both Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) and University of Indianapolis (UIndy), where she mentored pre-service teachers. During the same period, she became serious about her writing and since 2015 has published her poems in a variety of literary journals. Mary’s work was nominated once for a Pushcart Prize, and three of her poems were selected for the Indiana Poetry Archive Inverse in 2024. The Conjurer Keeps House will be her first published chapbook. Mary lives and writes in Indianapolis and serves as a docent at the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields.
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The over-arching theme to Mary Redman’s stunning new collection, The Conjurer Keeps House, is of a woman walking: in winter, after grief, in haze of fog, while contemplating aging and death. In “Childhood,” the poet roams “on sneakered feet” alongside friends as “nomads/hunter-gatherers.” In “Listen,” she chastens fellow walkers to “leave the earbuds out and hear.” In “First Landing,” the terrain of a seaside state park delights with ghost crabs, acid green moths, and “heron/yellow-crowned.” In “Late Winter Walk,” Redman notes how many of “life’s trials happen in winter,” noting how they then seem “most brittle.” In “stiffened joints, frozen faces, icy bones,” she finds “proof my life has limits,” a nod to her own mortality. Finally, in “A Walk After Rain,” Redman muses that “when truths are hard to reconcile,” she walks herself “a poem out in the wild.” Certainly a trek through these observant and wise pages will benefit any reader.
–Marjie Giffin — Author of Touring and The Late Hour
Mary Redman’s chapbook, The Conjurer Keeps House, is a powerful collection of poems that move the reader through tough subjects such as loss and aging while walking us through nature’s seasonal shifts. In “Walking Meditation” she gives us this wisdom: “My slower pace/means I see more deeply than I once did, /living like a beginner, open to revelation.” Later in the poem we learn she has endured the loss of four friends in one year. She ends it with the prophetic, “There is no time to waste.” Redman’s poem, “In Childhood” gives us the sense of a more whimsical past: “We roamed on sneakered feet a five-block radius/ from home wearing hats we made/ of rhubarb leaves grown at alley’s edge.” Later, in “Bird of Prey” she muses: “My walk today is much the same. / I do it for fierce hunger. / Though one knee aches, and both feet/ are numb, I plod on nonetheless…” which exhibits the fortitude of a survivor, someone who has lived a life and has learned through it all how to keep order. Redman’s chapbook is a must read for anyone who needs to conjure up some beauty and hope amid dark, challenging times.
–Lylanne Musselman, author of Weathering Under the Cat and Staring Dementia in the Face
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