Welcoming

The poems included in this book explore many key contemporary issues, such as the relationship between the sexes; violence against girls and women; sexuality and gender identity; religion and spirituality; mental health and psychiatry; work, meaning, and exploitation; and poverty and homelessness. The poet’s feminist philosophy background results in the intricate and sophisticated presentation of ideas. The writing is by turns innovative, playful, humorous, and visual, and engages readers in a number of ways.

“Andrea Nicki’s work demonstrates the confrontations of the natural spirit in a ravaged patriarchal world. Her poems are bold, often stark, at times refreshingly playful and at others shockingly real. Her eyes seek out the nuances of colour in the Alaskan darkness as well as the grief thundering in a disenfranchised heart. Rich and unique, earthy and spiritual, Nicki’s voice is one that won’t go unnoticed.”
—Madeline Sonik, author of the poetry collection Stone Sightings, and Fiction Arms and Drying the Bones

“Andrea Nicki’s book, Welcoming, is a generous invitation to find a place of sustenance and rest amid the wilderness. She explores the wilderness under the Alaskan skies, but also the wilderness of contemporary North American culture, of work and roles and identity. Journeying through the oppressive, patriarchal constructs of work, religion, and sexual and gender identity, Nicki forges a path all her own, busting down boundaries (including linguistic and stylistic ones) and invites us as guests and friends to join her in a celebration of an authentic self. She sings as Whitman sang, turning a song of myself into a shamanic invocation of welcoming the self and us with her.”
—Heather Derr-Smith, author of Each End of the World and The Bride Minaret

“I love reading Welcoming. Andrea Nicki has a compelling vocal eye that sees from outside of herself; she becomes nature, history, landscape of animal emotion, talking to us.”
—Judy Grahn, Women’s Spirituality and Arts teacher, author of two new collections, love belongs to those who do the feeling, and The Judy Grahn Reader.