Cindy Veach is the author of Gloved Against Blood, CavanKerry Press (Nov. 2017). Her poems have appeared in The Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, AGNI, Chicago Review, Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, Carolina Quarterly, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Journal, North American Review, Verse Daily and elsewhere. She is an award-winning quilter whose work was selected to tour with the Smithsonian and featured in Erika Wilson’s "Quilts of America".
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 co-edits MER Vox blog, is a volunteer with masspoetry.org and a frequent workshop instructor at the Massachusetts Poetry Festival. She directs fundraising programs for nonprofit organizations.
Photo by Mark Hillringhouse
Praise for Gloved Against Blood
Gloved Against Blood named a finalist for the 2018 Paterson Poetry Prize.
Gloved Against Blood reviewed by Jennifer Martelli for Up the Staircase Quarterly.
Nin Andrews Interviews Cindy Veach about Gloved Against Blood
Order directly from CavanKerry Press and enjoy a 20% discount.
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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.
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https://www.amazon.com/Gloved-Against-Blood-Cindy-Veach/dp/1933880643
http://www.upne.com/1933880648.html