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Parallel Press Publishes Cherma
Posted 03/11/2010
MADISON, Wis.- Jacqueline West draws inspiration from the names, local records, and family stories of a small group of Bohemian immigrants who
settled in western Wisconsin’s Pierce County in the late 1800s. Known as the Cherma settlement, it was named after the village of Holní Cermná in the modern-day Czech Republic. West presents a compelling picture of the lives, relationships, and hardships experienced by these immigrants: “She did not know if she should tell / how, of the seventy-four who sailed / only thirty-eight remained alive.”
Jacqueline West’s poetry has appeared in journals including St. Ann’s Review, Inkwell Journal, Pebble Lake Review, The Pedestal Magazine, Barnwood, and Briar Cliff Review. She has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her series for young readers, The Books of Elsewhere (Dial), debuted in summer 2010. She lives with her husband in Red Wing, Minnesota.
Parallel Press is an imprint of the University of Wisconsin–Madison Libraries.
Orders may be sent to:
Parallel Press
372 Memorial Library
728 State Street
Madison, WI 53706
Phone: (608) 262-2600
A selection for her chapbook, Cherma:
Lubov
After the sixth, the baby, died
she took her chair into the kitchen corner.
For two years she faced the joint where the walls split or met,
folding away through the rooms where no one cried.
Visitors stopped coming. Even the priest.
They could only stare at her back for so long,
at the silent curve of her spine,
rolling down toward the floor like a broken hill.
