This Winter Solstice will see the release of the first issue of Written River, a literary journal from Hiraeth Press focusing on eco-poetics and related non-fiction prose.

Written River is a literary journal published by Hiraeth Press which focuses on poetry and non-fiction prose exploring nature and our relationship to it.  Published quarterly in digital format, we strive to encourage the discipline of ecopoetics and return the voice of the poet to the body of the Earth.  Ecopoetics is poetry in which the energy of the ecosystem flows through the poem, creating a written river of words which ebbs with the creativity of the entire Earth community.  Written River marks the confluence of many streams and many voices as they flow back into the nourishing ground of the watershed.

If you are interested in submitting your work to Written River please see our submission guidelines.

We are pleased to announce that Hiraeth Press is now accepting submissions for poetry and non-fiction books.  Everything you need to know about submitting a manuscript to us is covered in our guidelines which you can find on the Submissions page.  Please review our catalog before submitting to ensure that your book is a good fit for the press.

We look forward to reading your manuscript!

Check out the first 15 pages of Huntley Meadows: A Naturalist’s Journal in Verse by Jamie K. Reaser.  If you like what you see, why not order a copy? You can also also share it with your friends through Facebook and Twitter.  Huntley Meadows is also available from your favorite online retailers.

Released August 15th, 2010. $15.95. Click here to purchase.

Gary Snyder wrote that lifting up a pen or brush is like releasing a claw or bite. Opening Huntley Meadows releases an entire ecosystem. It does precisely what a book like this should do: it takes you for a walk through the wetlands of the park and presents you with a rich offering of sights, sounds, and smells. Jamie K. Reaser has given voice to an offering of poetry as rich as soil, weaving lines from cattails and reeds. Her poetry invokes Huntley Meadows Park and through it, resonates with the whole Earth.

It would be unfair, however, to say that this book is the result of Jamie’s sole voice. Often the words will erupt suddenly into another tongue—bullfrogs, leopard frogs, cuckoos, redwing blackbirds, and geese are all alive and singing here. It was with great joy that I would read and hear the voices of my own familiar places or discover an unfamiliar, yet-to-be-met voice. This is a book which not only expresses the poetry of the human but of the birds, toads, and frogs who inhabit it.

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Letter from the Press

Hiraeth.  Why choose such a strange and foreign word for the name of a publishing company?  The Welsh word hiraeth encapsulates the spirit by which we strive and that the books we publish hope to inspire.  A direct translation of the word might be something like “longing,” though a more literary reading and a look at its role in medieval Welsh poetry reveals that it is a deep longing of the soul for one’s original homeland.

Here at Hiraeth Press we believe that our collective human homeland are the still-wild places of the Earth.  We long for a more ecologically and spiritually sane world and believe passionately that poetry is a form of activism on behalf of the more-than-human world.  Our mission states:

We are passionate about creativity as a means of transforming consciousness, both individually and socially.  We hope to participate in a revolution to return poetry to the public discourse and a place in the world which matters.  Of the many important issues of our times we feel that our relationship to the environment is of the most fundamental concern.  Our publications reflect the ideal that falling in love with the earth is nothing short of revolutionary and that through our relationship to nature we can birth a more enlightened vision of life for the future.  We believe that art and poetry are the universal language of the human experience and are thus most capable of transforming our vision of self and world.

The volumes in our 2010 Catalog reflect this longing.  In hopes that you too will participate in this transformation toward a spiritually and ecologically sustainable future we offer a number of volumes to inspire you and lure you toward a love affair with your own wild places, be they in the world or in the soul.  Though the selection is small it is rich.  With your support we hope to continue to publish books and poems to awaken hearts and minds.  Read on under your favorite tree.

Yours from the estuary,
Jason Kirkey
Founder, Hiraeth Press

View the 2010 Hiraeth Press Catalog (Requires Adobe Reader)

Intimate relationships with landscapes hold the potential of making us better humans.

Huntley Meadows: A Naturalist’s Journal in Verse is a year-long, poetic narrative of my relationship with the inner and outer wilds encountered at a county park on the fringes of Washington, DC.

In 2001 I assigned myself a “soul task.” At the time I was living in the pathologically lawned suburbs of Springfield, Virginia and working amidst the frenetic urban landscape of Washington, DC.  I felt depleted, disconnected, and down trodden by the daily grind and lack of emersion in Nature. I thus decided to create a weekly practice of “walking meditation” upon the trails of Huntley Meadows Park.

Huntley Meadows is a rarity.

The 1,500 acres of wetland and associated upland that make up the Park lie within just a few miles of our Nation’s Capital.  Green space at the urban fringe.  Presidents and Congressman have flown above it as long as they have flown.  And some, perhaps, have walked Her trails.

The boardwalk at Huntley is frequented by every manner of person.  Every age, every culture.  Children grow up there.  Adults reconnect with their inner child.  Dreams are dreamed. Blessings are counted.

Huntley Meadows is where people go to look deep within their souls and to be a part of something greater than themselves.  Even if that’s not the intent, it’s the outcome.  A single duck or a muskrat or a butterfly has the power to make it so.

I offer this book as a tangle gift to the human community, to you, that emerged from what was intended as a very personal exercise in re-connection, respite, and renewal.  I hope that you not only find it enjoyable, but that it awakens in you the desire to build an ever more intimate relationship with Nature—and through that—your own true nature.

As our landscapes are increasingly urbanized and fragmented by suburban lawns, places like Huntley Meadows Park grow in value—not only because they become refuges for wildlife, but because they are refugia for the wildness in each one of us.

We must save a place for the Wild both within and outside ourselves.

Go into the green spaces of your life.  Value and protect them.  Grow them.  Let them become the sacred places of humanity where humans are…and our future is defined.

August 15th will see the release of the latest Hiraeth Press book, Huntley Meadows: A Naturalists Journal in Verse, by Jamie K. Reaser, editor of the Courting the Wild series.

Watching an individual leaf
waltz its way down
from blue can’t be
any less miraculous than
birth.

Here’s what others have said of Huntley Meadows:

“In the lineage of Oliver, Stegner, Lopez and Thoreau, Jamie K. Reaser’s exquisite year-long record, Huntley Meadows, guides us as readers to a sacred return. In this living homage to fur, feather, scale and root we remember the deep love possible for a place through the seasons. The spirit of a shaman-poet and the keen eye of a naturalist come together in these pages. The end result is a collection of verses wherein a special place is given a voice. Listening to such voices offers all of us resurrection and renewal.”  -Frank Owen, creator of the online poetry experience, nekyia.poetry

“Reaser’s words are able to reach us within our deep fatigue, stirring us to venture out into the remaining untouched places and turn within. She bring us with her out into the tall grasses to watch the illusive Red Fox and listen to the Bluebirds conversing with the Wren, knowing that we will find what we need to sooth our modern ails in the simplicity, constancy and grace of our surround. What Reaser gathered during her time at Huntley Meadows has the potential to make our wanting lives much richer.” -L.M. Browning author of: Oak Wise and Ruminations at Twilight

“Jamie K. Reaser’s poems transport you into the natural world of Huntley Meadows, a magical place in the heart of the DC Metropolitan area. Her words are a welcoming awakening to a sense of nature, something many of us are losing and trying to regain.” -Gabriela Chavarria, PhD, Director of National Resource Defense Council
(NRDC) Science Center

“Soulful and delicious appetizers of poem that make you want to visit Huntley Meadows every day and see what Dr. Reaser has seen. She makes the invisible suddenly visible, and beautiful.” -Kevin Munroe, Huntley Meadows, Park Manager

It is my pleasure to introduce you to the latest (and first!) addition to Hiraeth Press, L.M. Browning.  L.M. is the author of Oak Wise: Poetry Exploring an Ecological Faith and the upcoming volume, Ruminations at Twilight, both published by Little Red Tree Publishing.  We first met in 2009 when, for about a week, I opened the press to submissions before deciding that it was simply not time to take that step yet.  During that period L.M. submitted a book to me with a letter attached explaining her excitement about Hiraeth Press and its mission and her desire to work with me as her publisher.  I was unable to at the time but we kept in touch and I saw the fantastic job she did marketing Oak Wise.  Now ready to take the next step with the press I invited her to join me in running the company with particular attention to our marketing and promotion needs.  It is with excitement that we begin this new chapter in Hiraeth Press.  Good things are around the corner!

—Jason Kirkey, Founder

It is with great pleasure that I inform you that The Salmon in the Spring is now the recipient of the silver medal for the 2010 Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY) in the Mind-Body-Spirit category.  Copies of the book purchased from JasonKirkey.com will come with a silver foil sticker announcing its award.  Congratulations to Jason and the other award recipients!

I am pleased to announce the completion of Hiraeth Press’ most ambitious project to date: The Salmon in the Spring: The Ecology of Celtic Spirituality by Jason Kirkey. The book is now in print and available for order at your favorite online retailer or at JasonKirkey.com for $17.95 + shipping.

Here at the end of the Cenozoic Era with the life systems withering away, a surprising creativity appears, a kind of mystical balancing act. The world’s spiritual traditions are entering into deeply engaged conversations through which the riches of each are ignited in new ways. With The Salmon in the Spring, Jason Kirkey has boldly carved out his place in this exciting work with his original interpretations of the concepts and stories of ancient Ireland . . . Kirkey’s vision speaks directly to our present ecological challenge. Rejecting those nature-denying forms of spirituality that have been used too easily to justify our domestication of the planet, The Salmon in the Spring announces its thrilling spiritual foundation: “Our wild nature is our soul.” —Brian Swimme, California Institute of Integral Studies