Rosa Lane
Rosa Lane
ROSA LANE is a native of coastal Maine with familial and ancestral roots steeped in lobster fishing. She is author of Tiller North, published in 2016 by Sixteen Rivers Press, and more recently Called Back, selected by Tupelo Press during its 2022 Summer Open Reading Period, forthcoming 2024; and Chouteau’s Chalk, winner of the 2017 Georgia Poetry Prize, named finalist for the 2021 National Indie Excellence Award. Lane earned her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and a second masters and a Ph.D. in the field of sustainable architecture from UC Berkeley. Her work won the Asheville Poetry Review’s 2018 William Matthews Poetry Prize, the Briar Cliff Review’s 18th Annual First Place Poetry Award, the 38th New Millennium Writings Contest, and a Maine Literary Award among other prizes. Her poems have appeared in the Asheville Poetry Review, Cutthroat, Massachusetts Review, Nimrod, Ploughshares, Rhino Poetry, Southampton Review, and elsewhere. She divides her time between coastal Maine and the San Francisco Bay Area, where she lives with her wife.
Tiller North
Tiller North wins the 2017 11th Annual National Indie Excellence Award in Poetry & a 2017 Maine Literary Award for Short Works (for 5-poem excerpt).
“Tiller North ends with the word sing, a final act in a volume of poems that narrates sorrows and pays tribute to the Maine people Rosa Lane comes from. She offers scenes looked over carefully, as everyone takes their place at the table. She tells of making it through a sense of unbelonging, imprinted by rejection based on class and cut-off dreams mitigated by fierce love, hard work, and constant relation to family, place, and the rules of the season.” —Beatrix Gates, author of Dos and In the Open
“Rosa Lane’s poems in this remarkable volume are reminiscent of Elizabeth Bishop’s in the author’s fierce dedication to craft….Lane’s poems build through the architecture of the image; the texture of physical detail; and a sparse, understated language that resonates a profound love of humanity, an embrace of the people around her, and a deep, inward movement of the poet’s imagination.” —Stephen Haven, author of The Last Sacred Place in North America and Dust and Bread
“In Tiller North, Rosa Lane gives us a world—not just one compass point, but all of them. In poems as lyrical as they are narrative, she presents a family and a landscape with precision and compassion. Her writing is as sharp as her heart is full. Tiller North is a moving and accomplished book.” —John Skoyles, author of A Little Faith and Permanent Change
Rosa Lane’s poetry reminds us why, at a certain time in our lives, we’ve had enough of innocence. Here is a compendium of those so crucial, chronology-defying self-revelations that we only know through our skin….Each poem is a skiff sculling through sounds almost Hopkinsesque, each measure of music anchored by the ground base we feel more than hear.” —Jeffrey Levine, author of Rumor of Cortez and Mortal, Everlasting
Hear Winter’s Kitchen from Tiller North, read by Stuart Kestenbaum, ME Poet Laureate, MPR.
Hear Rosa read selected poems from Tiller North and Chouteau’s Chalk.
Read announcement of Chouteau’s Chalk, winner of the 2017 Georgia Poetry Prize. (2019, University of
Georgia Press)
Read announcement of Called Back, selected from Tupelo Press’s 2022 Summer Open Reading
Period. (forthcoming 2024)
Read Rosa’s poem, Father, from Tiller North, winner of the 38th New Millennium Writings
Contest in poetry
Rosa’s new poem, Tomboy’s Orbit, will be published in Slippery Elm Literary Journal. And another new poem, Cesario, X, was a Contest Finalist for the 2017 Slippery Elm Poetry Prize.
Read Michael Dennis’ review of Tiller North in Today’s Book of Poetry, December 2016
Read Heather Judy’s review of Tiller North in Poetry Now, 2016/3, August 2016
Read Matt Sutherland’s review of Tiller North in Foreword Reviews, May 27, 2016
Tiller North on Small Press Distribution’s recommended book list April/May 2016
Read Rosa’s poem “Boats Named Women” from Tiller North featured in Verse Daily on April 13, 2016
Tiller North was 10th on the Poetry Bestseller List at Small Press Distribution for March 2016
Read an interview with Rosa Lane & Nina Lindsay on their processes of poetry making in the online Pixelated conversation series
Read Rosa’s poem “Aunt Hazel” in Poetry Now, Winter Issue 2015/2016, Page 6
Rosa’s poem “Father” won the Poetry category award in the 38th New Millennium Writings Contest.
Read Rosa’s poem “June Bugs” in Ploughshares
Read Rosa’s Poem “Apogee,” winner of the 18th Annual First Place Poetry Award in The Briar Cliff Review.