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by Sally Brown (Illustrator), Renée Nicholson (Author)
A deeply moving collection, Feverdream: Poems brings together lyric poetry, lived experience, and artistic collaboration to explore grief, illness, place, and the enduring human capacity for resilience.Many of the poems originated in narrative medicine sessions-spaces where close reading and reflective writing deepen understanding of illness and care. Nicholson spent two years writing with patients in a chemotherapy infusion clinic in Morgantown while her brother underwent the same treatments, an experience that profoundly shaped both the content and the process of this book.
The collection also features artwork by visual artist Sally Jane Brown, continuing a collaborative relationship that began with their earlier chapbook What We Do in the Hollows. The pairing of poetry and visual art deepens the book's meditative quality and underscores its commitment to creative dialogue across forms. Rooted deeply in Appalachia-where Nicholson has lived for over twenty years and where her family history spans seven generations-Feverdream also engages contemporary concerns, including climate change, gun violence, and healthcare, while remaining grounded in the fierce, transformative power of attention. Feverdream: Poems will resonate with readers of contemporary American poetry, those navigating grief and illness, healthcare professionals interested in narrative approaches to medicine, and anyone drawn to poetry that is unsentimental, compassionate, and deeply human. Renée K. Nicholson is the author of multiple poetry collections, including Postscripts (Wild Ink Publishing, 2024) and Roundabout Directions to Lincoln Center (Urban Farmhouse Press, 2014), as well as the memoir-in-essays Fierce and Delicate: Essays on Dance and Illness (West Virginia University Press, 2021), a finalist for the Housatonic Prize in Nonfiction. She is a nationally recognized voice in health humanities and narrative medicine, a freelance writer and humanities consultant, and faculty emerita at West Virginia University, where she served as Director of the WVU Humanities Center from 2020 to 2024.Steeped in imagery and memory, Renée Nicholson's moving third collection Feverdream conjures a West Virginia simultaneously past, present, and perpetual. This is the land that holds not just Nicholson's dearest memories of her late brother, Nate, but also his very way of seeing and being in the world. Home, Nicholson reminds us, is more than a place or even its people-it is a quality of attention, an exchange of care, a mutual beholding. Feverdream feels like a gift, an invitation.
-- Jonathan C Chou, MD, author of Resemblance/與
