Cindy Veach is the author of Gloved Against Blood (CavanKerry Press), named a 2018 Paterson Poetry Prize finalist and a Massachusetts Center for the Book 'Must Read'. Her poems have appeared in The Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day Series, AGNI, Chicago Review, Prairie Schooner, Sugar House Review, Poet Lore, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Journal, North American Review, Verse Daily, Salamander and elsewhere. Her poem, "This Patch Where the Light Cannot Reach," was selected by Mary Ruefle for the 2019 Phillip Booth Poetry Prize (Salt Hill Journal). Her sonnet crown, "Witch Kitsch," was selected by Marilyn Nelson for the 2018 Samuel Washington Allen Prize (New England Poetry Club).
Cindy received an MFA from the University of Oregon where she was a Graduate Teaching Fellow and an assistant poetry editor for Northwest Review. She is co-poetry editor of Mom Egg Review (MER) and MER quarterly Vox folio. She is also an award-winning quilter whose work was selected to tour with the Smithsonian and featured in Erika Wilson’s "Quilts of America".
Photo by Mark Hillringhouse
Praise for Gloved Against Blood
Selected as a Massachusetts Center for the Book 'Must Read'
Gloved Against Blood named a finalist for the 2018 Paterson Poetry Prize.
Nin Andrews Interviews Cindy Veach about Gloved Against Blood
Reviews:
Jennifer Martelli for Up the Staircase Quarterly.
Christine Stewart-Nuñez for The Mom Egg Review.
Renee Emerson (New Pages).
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Cindy Veach’s stunning book provides an almost painful contrast: her finely wrought words stitched to the rough cloth of mill work; unrewarded and relentless labor fitted with rewarding and expansive language; a song that can be heard just above the looms. Women who have so rarely had their stories told are the main inhabitants of Gloved Against Blood, working toward an elusive promise of a new country that’s dismantled by the exhaustion and cacophony of factory work. The poems in this collection are heartbreaking works of wonder, as remarkable to witness as brocade against a tumble of old bricks, as a crown from a bolt of cotton. |
For me, Gloved Against Blood holds the perfect image for these beautiful poems that struggle to push away received histories. From the immigrant mill girls in 19th century Lowell, Massachusetts to contemporary café workers who sell espresso / fifteen ways, we need to protect ourselves against hard times—against the firm eye of the needle—against forces we cannot control no matter how hard we work to sew or mend. This is an extremely fine and forceful debut.
— Susan Rich www.susanrich.net/
For its hardness, for how it resists / splintering,” Gloved Against Blood, by Cindy Veach, with its meditations on the lives and hardships of female textile workers, demands the reader’s steady hand and unflinching gaze through braided images, sometimes lacey with memory, sometimes sharp as a needle. Here, the poet investigates faith—in husbands, in the company, in God—but does not arrive at easy conclusions. Ultimately, this collection reminds us that the lives of women are not delicate, domestic trifles; it witnesses to their unyielding survival, asking us to look upon their narratives, “the spiraled remnants of their making.”
—Emilia Phillips https://emiliaphillips.com
Gloved Against Blood can be purchased using the links below.
cavankerrypress.org/product-category/poetry/
https://www.amazon.com/Gloved-Against-Blood-Cindy-Veach/dp/1933880643