Laura Foley, author of Joy Street, on tour January 2015

About Joy Street

Paperback: 46 pages

Publisher: Headmistress Press (July 8, 2014)

Each poem in this radiantly plainspoken collection offers subtle and penetrating observations that swell to a rich tapestry of ordinary life, beheld from a stance of grace and buoyancy. Starting with intimations of desire in childhood, these poems travel through ordinary domestic scenes to the blessing of a maturity in which the narrator, still embracing desire and wild promise, thrives in the midst of life’s darker gifts. This collection is truly a joy to read. It puts to shame those of us who walk through our days with “the din of loneliness,” ignoring life’s many invitations for bliss.

JOY STREET is extremely moving, and almost unprecedentedly direct, simple, devastatingly clear. —David Ferry (National Book Award in Poetry)

Laura Foley writes in a spare, rich style that I found endlessly fascinating. As I came to the end of Joy Street, I was left with brief, bright glimpses of her life, of moments that were at times intimate and at others mundane, but always shining with vivid grace. What a delightful read.–C.M. Bolling

To say that I enjoyed Joy Street doesn’t begin to do this little gem of a book justice. Its effect on me was deeper and more complex than that word suggests. That my younger brother was gay may explain, in part, its emotional impact on me. The joy of reading these poems is their compact brevity. The author manages to convey astoundingly complex images and feelings with a minimum of words.–Roy Snell

I love a poem with just the right words to draw me into an experience that then becomes shared. The poems in Joy Street share a little slice of life that might have slipped by unnoticed.–Kate S. Gillis

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About Laura Foley

Laura Foley is the author of four poetry collections. The Glass Tree won the Foreword Book of the Year Award, Silver, and was a Finalist for the New Hampshire Writer’s Project, Outstanding Book of Poetry. Her poems have appeared in journals and magazines including Valparaiso Poetry Review, Inquiring Mind, Pulse Magazine, Poetry Nook, Lavender Review, and in the anthology, In the Arms of Words: Poems for Disaster Relief. She won Harpur Palate’s Milton Kessler Memorial Poetry Award and the Grand Prize for theAtlanta Review’s International Poetry Contest. She lives on a woody hill in South Pomfret, Vermont with her partner Clara Gimenez and their three dogs. Please visit her website for book information or more poems: laurafoley.net.