Laundry - Barbara Crooker, Spring 2016

Barbara Crooker’s poems have appeared in journals and anthologies including The Bedford Introduction to Literature and Good Poems American Places. She has six full-length books of poetry, including Small Rain (Purple Flag Press, 2014) and Barbara Crooker: Selected Poems (FutureCycle Press, 2015).

“Laundry” is part of a series of glosas I did while in residence at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Annaghmakerrig, Ireland. I gave myself the challenge of writing these glosas using quatrains taken from Irish writers, and tried to let the beauty of the landscape and the musical rhythms of conversation seep into the poems as well. They’re part of a manuscript in progress called The Book of Kells, which I hope to complete when I return there this spring.