Confidence: Poems

Confidence by Robin Bradford is a gathering of 19 poems about living in difficult times. Drought, cancer and #BlackLivesMatter are here, as well as laughter, beauty and grit. Black-eyed Susans in the parking lot, lost keys and baby toys, teaching a son to drive in a cemetery, the speaker in these poems contemplates the urgent question: How can we remain awake to life's urgency, tenderness, and wonder?

Confidence by Robin Bradford is a gathering of 19 poems about living in difficult times. Drought, cancer and #BlackLivesMatter are here, as well as laughter, beauty and grit. Black-eyed Susans in the parking lot, lost keys and baby toys, teaching a son to drive in a cemetery, the speaker in these poems contemplates the urgent question: How can we remain awake to life's urgency, tenderness, and wonder? "Poetry gives us the chance to sit down, get quiet and listen. All of us are lIke Hanuman, the great Hindu monkey god whose punishment was to forget how great he was. Thankfully his worshippers chant his wonderful attributes to remind him how capable he is. We can all use a little confidence in these times."

Robin Bradford is a poet, essayist and fiction writer. Her poems have appeared most recently in The Texas Observer and Friends Journal, the national Quaker magazine, and the Texas Poetry Calendar. Her work has won the Dobie Paisano Fellowship for Texas Writers, an O. Henry Award, a Texas Literature Grant and a Community Sabbatical Grant from the University of Texas Humanities Institute, among other honors. Her previous chapbook is Digging In. She has also published dozens of stories, essays and poems in the Boston Review, Austin Chronicle, Cimarron Review and in several anthologies. Her new book Confidence is a gathering of 19 poems about living in difficult times. Drought, cancer and #BlackLivesMatter are here--as well as love, beauty and grit. Bradford has lived in Austin, Texas, for 25 years where she works as communications director at Austin Community Foundation. She has taught creative writing to children living at affordable housing and yoga to people who were previously homeless. She currently teaches Zen meditation and writing.