Anatomy of the World: Poems

Nothing is more meaningful than family life. This world can seem a beautiful and loving Eden in one moment and the next you can feel buried alive. Your loved ones become sick, or they grow into hellions. Or they don’t even make it into this world at all, or they live a long life and then die, leaving you behind. Life is confusing, life is beautiful, life is sometimes overwhelming. Being a mother is at the center of family life, an all-consuming role that sometimes is invisible and other times essential. This collection is about Meade’s world, told through the anatomy of family life. Celia, along with her partner Karl, experienced late miscarriage, the adoption of two beautiful girls, alongside brushes with addiction and loss. These poems are based on feelings that sometimes were fleeting and other times endure. They reflect the life of a poet at a certain point of time, as she is growing older and her children enter into adulthood and continue to evolve.

Celia Meade is an MFA graduate of Sarah Lawrence College. She holds an MFA in painting from the University of Calgary, has shown internationally, and lives in Salt Spring Island, Canada and Bronxville, New York. She was runner-up for the Raven Chapbook Award (2022) and has appeared in dozens of literary magazines. Visit her website at https: //celiameade.com/.