Winner of the 2006 Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize

The poems in Moving House are grounded in the sometimes haunted landscapes of South Carolina, a setting rich with the flavors of ripe peaches and tomatoes and fresh caught shrimp.  The speaker of these poems turns her attention to the ordinary objects of her Southern home, seeing artistry in the scales of a fish, the pearly buttons of a linen shirt, a missed eclipse, a sprig of morning glory run wild.  In the interaction between story, history, family, and memory, these poems find meaning rooted in the land, a source of both fear and wonder. 

Lisa Hammond’s Moving House is a startlingly beautiful first collection of poems made of careful noticing, especially of the natural world. But more important than the naturalist’s accurate observation is the depth and delicacy (an oddly effective pairing) of an imagination that, in her best poems, transforms self and reader.

—Susan Ludvigson

 

This book can be purchased in the USC Lancaster bookstore and is also available online from Amazon, Powell’s Books, and the Texas A&M University Press Consortium.

I love how attentive to the world these poems are, the way they illuminate the small wonders that surround us. Lisa Hammond is a gifted poet, and this collection should gain her many appreciative readers.

—Ron Rash

Lisa Hammond is Associate Professor of English at the University of South Carolina Lancaster.  Her poems have appeared in Southern Poetry Review, South Carolina Review, North Carolina Literary Review, Literary Mama, and storySouth. She is currently working on a new collection, Finding the Goddess. 

For more information about Dr. Hammond, please see her biography; to schedule a reading, contact her by email.