Home Front

In HOME FRONT, Leigh Herrick’s first of two collections written during the beginning decade of the New Millennium, we are offered a landscape honed in scope and hauntingly beautiful, as the poet covers a global ground, communicating the immediacy of social and environmental concerns.

In HOME FRONT, Leigh Herrick’s first of two collections written during the beginning decade of the New Millennium, we are offered a landscape honed in scope and hauntingly beautiful, as the poet covers a global ground, communicating the immediacy of social and environmental concerns. As Scott Helmes has written of HOME FRONT, we are reminded that poetry can be relevant, and Herrick affirms that relevance through language’s power and endurance. Largely written after the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, and leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Herrick’s work here serves in the best tradition of engaged poetry, where is found a compendium of images and voices reflecting not just moments of personal hope and love, but those of troubled times in a troubled country, a troubled world, and on a planet in crisis. Often drawing on her developed sense of linguistic rhythm, Herrick’s HOME FRONT blends the abstract with the traditional, leading Sheila E. Murphy to write, “I have seldom read work that so intrinsically honors both tradition and innovation in the art of poetry. This volume is profoundly important.”

LEIGH HERRICK is an engaged poet, writer, and recording artist who trains in Middle Eastern and Afro-Caribbean hand drumming. Her poetry has won numerous awards, and she is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Herrick has produced two CDs, Just War (2004) and Monocle Man (2009), and she is at work on a third. Over her decades in Minnesota, Herrick has given talks, performances, readings, and testimony at numerous coffee houses, bars, galleries, and institutions, including The Loft, the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis Public Schools, and Hamline University. Herrick’s activism has ranged from protesting in Madison, WI, Washington, D.C., and the School of the Americas (WHINSEC) at Fort Benning, GA. She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and a graduate of the University of Minnesota with degrees in English Literature and French.