Description
Poetry. Women's Studies. Chock full of song and timbre and truth on every page, S. Renay Sanders' DANCING IN PLACE is an intimate look into the landscape of Northern Ohio's working class. Metal lunch boxes, lace-up boots; women in pert party dresses with Bibles tucked safely in their purses, this collection showcases the realities, the courage and honor it takes for "hometown" culture to survive urban growth. The way people living in these communities lean into one another to preserve the rich roots of where it all began—with the music. The tempo of the rain hitting the ground, the cadence of cicadas; from those early primal connections fixed in mountain music, to Polka, to Rock and Roll, to Up Town Funk.
"Believe me reader, you will feel the beat."—Kari Gunter-Seymour
"DANCING IN PLACE delivers a generous serving of poetry from a lady with her sleeves rolled up at the all-night cafeteria across from the music club. Memories, characters, emotions, experience, all the ingredients. Savor the word song."—Chuck Joy
"S. Renay Sanders' poems celebrate post industrial Cleveland while hearkening back to her Appalachian roots. These are lyrics laced with wry humor and raw emotion that dance 'in the light of the full now moon.' Feel their pull and sway."—Ray MacNeice
Author Bio
American poet S. Renay Sanders learned to love the spoken word amidst a family of Appalachian storytellers and musicians. She secretly wrote poems for years, but came out of the poetry closet with a piece in the Hessler Street Poetry Anthology in 2010. Her poems have been included in anthologies published by the Writing Knights and Poet's Haven. Her work can also be found in ETERNAL SNOW (Nirala Publications, 2017), a worldwide anthology. Renay received a third place award for her poem, "Awakened to Bear Witness of Sweet Atrocities" in the 2012 Hessler Street Poetry Anthology. "Noteworthy Travlin" was the title poem of a broadside published by Night Ballet. Her work was selected to be included in the 2016-2017 Women of Appalachia project "Women Speak." Most recently, Sanders is the author of DANCING IN PLACE: POEMS (Nirala Publications, 2020). A native Clevelander, her poems are inspired by the characters she encounters in life, her male-dominated family, husband, sons, grandsons and the beauty of the Cuyahoga Valley, where she now resides.
Author City: PENINSULA, OH USA