Fall Risk by Stacey Lawrence

“It’s so seldom a book of poems can contain both love poems and acceptance of grief. Take Stacey’s poems to a couch, curl under your great-grandmother’s quilt, and understand love and loss are one.”
–Nikki Giovanni“

“Lawrence’s first collection of poems, Fall Risk, renders, in beautiful and precise language, a testament to the human capacity for endurance and survival. At times intimate, at times cinematic, these are moving pieces marked by the poet’s ability to capture us with fresh and brilliant detail, as in ‘Therapy,’ where we encounter a ‘large lone goldfish/orange like an/American president’ or in ‘Christmas in England’ where ‘silverware glints like dinoflagellates/in a dark lagoon.’ A work of great intimacy and individuality.”
–Catherine Doty

“The poems of Fall Risk are beautiful and brutal at once. Lawrence is able to corral presence and absence the physicality of loss in poem after poem. Unsparing in its imagery, this collection tergiversates between nuance and grit, creating a stunning music and a powerful experience a testament to what it’s like to continue to live. I am glad to have discovered Lawrence’s work through this book.”
–BJ Ward