I know at least four Virginia poets with books published this year so it seems timely to recommend some fall reading, gifting, or perhaps simply to raise awareness of our local bards. There is also the matter of reverence for place and all writing that is a reflection of our chosen hill, where our consciousness plays out, our miracle of aliveness, our thousands of breakfasts and tying of shoelaces. There is also, I confess, a splash of self-promotion. That said, I hope this list leads at least a few people into the mystery of one solitude speaking to another:

Cloister Walk (Finishing Line Press, 2025) by Priscilla Melchior.

“ . . . Melchior’s devout poems act as prayers that aspire to ‘summon wildness deep within,’ to join with coyotes and howl into the night our ‘discordant hymns.’ The sacred text these poems draw from is the natural world, a space Melchior portrays as brimming with life and death, more miraculous than any human holy text, a space where even a ‘twirling leaf/dangling by a single spider thread’ means the world”
…………..                                       ……..—John Hoppenthaler, Author of Night Wing Over Metropolitan Area

The Heft of Promise (Pine Row Publications, 2025) by Frederick Wilbur

“ . . . Frederick Wilbur invites the reader to ride shotgun as he drives down the dusty roads of love, loss, memory, and the quiet beauty found in nature, craftsmanship, and the passage of time. He allows the rugged, lived-in landscapes to provide a rich vocabulary that Wordsworth referred to as ‘a selection of language really used by men.’ This collection reminds us to reflect deeply on the promises we inherit, keep, and sometimes break. Like the scent of sawdust and autumn air, these words linger long after the journey ends.
…………..                                       ……..—Jose Oseguerra, author of And This House is Only a Nest

Medicine Cache Under Lichen (Finishing Line Press, 2025) by William Prindle

“ . . . nature will have its way, and mankind must yield eventually to her relentless wisdom. Yet, the anxiety over such consequences is not all there is, for the poet ensures that there is a time and place ‘to change your dread/to compassion,’ and when all is in total disarray, there is hope, too, in a simple shared action, ‘if enough of us/clap, really clap, from the heart, we can/bring that fluttering spirit back to life.’ Whatever might horrify us—whether real or not—it is not too late ‘to find/the path of restoration/together before nightfall.’ What a blessing to be reminded of the value of shared beauty and the beauty of shared values by a poet of such thoughtful and eloquent sensitivity!”
…………..                                       ……..—Sofia M. Starnes, Virginia Poet Laureate, Emerita

A Legacy of Birds (Kelsay Books, 2025) by Sharon Perkins Ackerman

“The world is indeed charged in Ackerman’s new collection, A Legacy of Birds. It flames out in image and startling language, clearly kin to Gerard Manley Hopkins’ ecstatic nature and devotional poetry. More closely, Ackerman’s beautiful work honors her native Appalachia of sweet milk, pleated fields, bluing mountains, tubers and roots dungeoned, pinwheels of trillium, a nightjar’s serenade, the family skillet ‘blood heavy.’ Her deft call to this world is both blessing and keen; her legacy of memory, still green and young and ‘born of air’ is our gift of grace.

…………..                                       ……..—Linda Parsons, Author of Valediction: Poems and Prose

I hope these poetry collections fill your days with the colors of fall, the boxwood scent of Virginia as it finds its slow route to frost. Meanwhile, I will be at the Crozet Book Festival on October 25th, in the library with copies of my book and a bag of Kraft caramels. Hope to see some local readers and poets there.

Sharon Perkins Ackerman’s poems can be found in the Southern Humanities Review, Atlanta Review, Appalachian Places, Salvation South, Kestrel, Meridian, Broad River Review, Blue Mountain Review, and others. Her second poetry collection A Legacy of Birds is available from New Dominion Books or Amazon and her third collection Sweeping the Porch (Pine Row Press) will be published early 2026. She is poetry editor for Streetlight Magazine.