In a Tension of Leaves and Binding

In a Tension of Leaves and Binding is an exploratory journey that examines our relationship to the natural world through the lens of a single garden. Enunciated from both a human perspective and from the imagined voices of the plants and animals that actually live in the garden itself, this collection also explores conceptual and visual articulations that function to disrupt our assumptions about poetry, meaning, and language. Woven through these dialectical conversations is a dominant elegiac thread that explores the territory of grief while simultaneously grappling with the possibilities for hope against the limits of language. The book concludes with a meditative essay or ＂Author’s Notes＂ that describe the processes and approaches employed and also work to pose questions that maintain the integrity of the entire manuscript’s fluidity, experimental form, and openness.

Renée M. Sgroi holds a PhD in Education from the University of Toronto, an M.Sc. in Creativity and Change Leadership from SUNY Buffalo State, and works as a post-secondary educator. A runner up in the UK’s 2020 erbacce poetry prize, her debut poetry collection, life print, in points, was published that year by erbacce-press. Renée’s poetry has been published in numerous journals and anthologies including Pinhole Poetry, The /temz/ Review, The Windsor Review, The Beliveau Review, Lummox (U.S.), Prairie Fire, The Prairie Journal, Fresh Voices, and many others. Renée is a contributing editor to Arc Poetry Magazine. Her second poetry collection is forthcoming in 2024.