Transition, transience, relocation--as our world shrinks, the worldwide web connects us, and transportation becomes more affordable for many, we are increasingly a global nation of transplants. Welcome to life in the millennium!
Migrations are spawned by war, famine, or some primal instinct in us; one may be forced into exile or simply sense that it is time to move on. Pilgrimages have been been a staple in the spiritual landscape of many faiths. A loved one dies or a job ends, and you are plunged --transplanted--into transition.
Transplants experience all the dynamics of transition and perhaps culture shock, as they move from place to place--possibly against their will. Flexibility, adaptation, language or jargon learning, anger and grief management--these are the skills to be mastered if one is to survive in a learning curve that may be unwanted, fast-paced, or in a hostile environment. Emotional stability is not a given; emotional shipwreck is common.
As explored through poetry, Transplants tackles the chaos of transition: the joys, confusions, freedom and frustration of moving between places, cultures, and friends, while trying to maintain a sense of identity and home. To be human is to experience transition; you will find a companion for the journey in Transplants.
Pat Butler is your tour guide. A native New Yorker, Pat has transplanted from New York to New England, France, and the South, and currently resides in Florida. Transition is a way of life for Pat, and the major theme of this chapbook, her third with Finishing Line Press. (Two previous chapbooks, Poems from the Boatyard and The Boatman's Daughter, explored themes of place, identity and home.)
Observations on Southern culture are mixed with those of an ex-pat returning after 12 years overseas. The poems, written mostly in Georgia, emerge through the lens of re-entry shock. The Boatman's Daughter finds herself on a new shore; America has changed, as she has. And the South is not the North.
The urban rat race slows to small town crawl and contemplations on the couch. The concrete jungle cedes to woods, rivers and lakes. Northern directness, mellowed by French finesse, now yields to Southern charm. Transition is eased by the gifts of magnolias, hummingbirds, and an overhead fan.
Transplants opens with a poem that evokes the polar tensions of transition, and closes with one that resolves those tensions. Both poems are set, appropriately, in Autumn, with its distinctive rhythms of death and release, gathering and harvest. It appears as one of the chapbook's main characters, and marks Pat's arrival in and (eight years later) departure from Georgia. It provides an apt metaphor for transition, and ultimately yields its secrets on hope.
Alexa Selph, poetry instructor at Emory Continuing Education in Georgia writes, "Transplants captures moments that are both fresh and familiar. Pat has a gift for transforming everyday experience into vivid imagery, engaging all the senses and leaving us with the wish to come back for more."
Pat has also been published in a number of literary and online journals, including Cardinal Flower, Aurorean, and Ruminate. While in Georgia, Pat was part of the Peachtree Poets' scene, including its annual poetry competition, where she has won numerous awards, mentions, and publication in their chapbooks. Four entries appear in Transplants.
Follow Pat on social media and the following sites:
Website: www.theliteraryboatyard.wordpress.com
Blog: http: //poemsfromtheboatyard.blogspot.com/
Facebook: Poems from the Boatyard
Instagram: boatyardpat
