Participated in the West Virginia Humanities Council’s
Poetry During A Time Of Crisis Project
Whipstitches is, like the author who so carefully penned these little gems of insight and poetic thoughtfulness, utterly unique and genuine. Randi’s poetry always leaves the reader thinking about the words and images long after the pages of her book have been closed.
— Dr. Sylvia B. Shurbutt, senior managing editor of the Anthology of Appalachian Writers
The poems in Whipstitches are exquisite—keenly observed, delicately rendered moments that offer beauty and wisdom. They show us what we think we know and leave us awed at what we’ve missed.
— Mark Brazaitis, author of The Incurables and The Other Language
These poems are never merely pastoral, and their emotional range belies their small size: from the lyrical and humorous to the acerbic, the rueful, and even the creepy. “Every little whipstitch,” we can hear Randi’s haunting voice moving between worlds like a wily shape-shifter.
— Maggie Anderson, author of Dear All and Years That Answer
Each poem in Whipstitches is a world Ward makes us see, or see again, with a child’s clarity melded to metaphor. Underlying the whole is abiding love for the homeplace and knowledge of the wounds it inflicts.
— Lee Sharkey, author of Walking Backwards and Calendars of Fire
Ward’s poems unfold unaffectedly, yet with increasing enigma. Snow is rarely just snow, broomsedge is rarely just broomsedge. Whipstitches narrates a subjectivity, a human body within the world, a poetic sensibility that is among the subtlest that I have encountered in my recent reading.
— John Taylor, author of If Night is Falling
The poems in Meditations on Salt feel as though they were written by someone stuck in a psychological diving bell, someone who is completely swaddled in gauze and struggling to connect with the world.
— Kim Simonsen, Faroese critic and author of December Morning