Jess L Parker’s debut poetry collection, “Star Things,” out of a tight and competitive field, won Dynamo Verlag’s inaugural book contest for 2020.

Writers were invited to submit book-length manuscripts in poetry, prose or any textual combination or reinterpretation of the genres.

“In ‘Star Things,’ Jess Parker pulls down the cosmos as if a blanket, hangs the firmament itself as if a string of festive lights to illuminate the magic in the worldly mundane,” the publisher’s statement read. “These 61 brief yet powerful poems work in a broad array of forms, at once playful and serious, taking risks, toying with readers’ expectations and delivering seemingly effortless coups de grace with a sly wink.”

Parker spoke with The Mining Journal about her book.

The collection of poems titled “Star Things” is the winner of the Dynamo Verlag Book Prize. (Photo courtesy of Dynamo Verlag)

“It evolved with me over time as a writer, and has a lot of roots in the Upper Peninsula, especially some of the poems that have different references around Lake Superior,” she said.

As with many writers, her book didn’t happen overnight.

Parker, who is from Gladstone, said she started writing the book as a student at Northern Michigan University. Over about a decade, she finally finished it.

The poems in “Star Things” are freeform.

“They fairly adhere to the same form throughout, but what really holds the poems together — as you can get a sense from the title — is that there’s a lot that ties them together around cosmic imagery, and imagery with the sky and the stars, that kind of tethers them throughout the book, although the subject matter does vary,” Parker said.

Parker lives in Madison, Wisconsin, with her husband, son and French bulldog, and is an insurance sales strategy manager. Her creative work has appeared in Bramble, Poetry Hall, Millwork, Wallop Zine and elsewhere. She holds a master of arts degree in Spanish literature from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a master of business administration degree from Concordia University.

At NMU, she majored in English and Spanish and studied poetry under NMU professor and poet, Austin Hummell, who said, “‘Star Things’ is a testament to the supremacy of motif over theme and proof that the lyric voice is still alive in the genre.”

Hummell is the author of the Del Sol Press Poetry Prize-winning poetry collection, “Poppy,” and “The Fugitive Kind,” winner of the University of Georgia Press’ Contemporary Poetry Series.

In 2010, Parker received the Outstanding Graduating Senior Award from the English department at NMU. Her short story, “An is to a was,” was the winner of the department’s VandeZande Fiction Prize in 2010. She also graduated from NMU that year.

There already are other testimonials about “Star Things.”

Said Josh Norman, author of “Telescopes and Other People” and one of the contest judges, “Every love, every scraped knee, every abandonment, every moon is at once familiar yet alien.”

Cynthia Marie Hoffman, author of “Call Me When You Want to Talk About the Tombstones,” said, “If the stars’ reflection in a pond creates a ‘Morse code’ that communicates with the constellations, so do these poems transmit the intricacies of being human in orbit among the stars…holding close to the knowledge that ‘we were moondust and will be again.'”

Does Parker have a favorite poem in “Star Things”?

She acknowledged that one of her favorites is “Moonless,” the second poem in the collection, which addresses being moonless as a way to show loss or sadness. That, she noted, fits in with other themes in “Star Things.”

“It does have a lot to do with the sky and the moon, which appears throughout the book, so I think it’s a good representation,” Parker said.

This is “Moonless”:

It was dark and balmy when you abandoned

No speck of bright night star to guide me,

nor a beckoning sky beam to anchor a bad day.

You could say that I was moonless —

bit a chunk of night and couldn’t chew through it.

You knew it but remained to humor me

’til I couldn’t be humored.

It was rumored you were last seen with a cocktail

mumbling on stardust, waxing tragically and moonstruck,

before falling from the earth completely,

you were fumbling with the car keys.

Erring on the side of agony I wander with a ghost of gravity. Semi-circling my ache, I tie a noose around it

casually. Leave it on the island where you left me, on the beach.

Before the silver bleached, the lights went out completely.

Personal experience definitely inspired her to write “Star Things,” she said.

“I’ve been through certain life challenges like everyone, I think, goes through,” said Parker, who noted she uses poetry as a way to express herself and put something down on paper.

“It really has been an outlet for me to grow as a person,” she said.

There might be more opportunity for growth as Parker indicated she is about halfway through her next collection of poems.

In the meantime, “Star Things” will be released in paperback in November.

For more information, visit https://dynamoverlag.com/.