In a dazzle of words and color, these poems and encaustic art pieces evoke the daily mysteries which surround any of us who walk the earth. Loretta Libby Atkins’ exquisite pigment and beeswax images enhance in color, form, and line — themes Kathryn Hunt explodes in koan-like poems, vibrant with image. Grief for a sister lost involves the life of trees, night and its sky, a poet’s rhythm, the heart’s pressing concerns. I celebrate this double vision by two artist friends, attuned to their worlds and to each other.

— Alice Derry (Asking and Hunger)

Kathryn Hunt’s contemplative poems are in dialogue with the self, nature, and the cosmos and paired here with the marvelous paintings by Loretta Libby Atkins. Together, the painting and poems explore what it is to be a living creature in this world, yearning for conversation with the non-verbal, non-literal world. Atkins’ abstract paintings, with their powerful encaustic colorings, suggest landscapes, skyscapes, seascapes; birdwing, boatsail, calligraphic markings. Like Hunt’s lyric poems, they conjure the wanderings of the human mind and soul.

— Peter Pereira (Saying the World and What’s Written on the Body)

Hautaughdah Press, 2023