In Nameless as the Minnows (Madville Publishing), poems move through an early consideration of one’s yet unrealized self being washed toward a faceless future, into an exploration of growth and resilience through family and loss, and farther into the miracles of forming a new family and finding one’s true name among the wonders of the natural world, culminating in the spirit yet reaching toward the stars, the universe, still questioning the unknowable and praising “the small rituals of becoming and being.” Available now.

The poems in Darwin's Breath (Iris Press) ponder fossils embedded into earth's oldest mountains, explore thoughts of the mockingbird with her distinct cells "rising on the wind," travel through memories of a childhood in government housing, a period when the poet's father worked at factories where uranium was enriched for the first atomic bomb and her mother peeled pot after pot of potatoes. Gardens bind the book's sections, those from childhood where the father bent to his tasks despite sunburned head and shoulders, and the gardens that the poet tended, all places where the gardener "dedicated the holiness of labor." A sense of reverence and gratitude permeates the poems--awe at the way stars hurl their flames "through the vacuum of space," at the permanence of rocks, the mysteries of birth and death, and gratefulness for the gift of each new day, each season rolling into another season. Available through Amazon.

​Connie Jordan Green is the author of novels for young people, poetry chapbooks and collections, and a personal newspaper column that ran for more than 42 years. Her poetry and prose have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. She is the recipient of awards for her writing including induction into the East Tennessee Writers Hall of Fame, a Tribute to the Arts Award from the Oak Ridge Arts Council, and inclusion in Listen Here: Women Writing in Appalachia (Univ Press of Kentucky, 2003). She taught creative writing for the University of Tennessee and continues to teach at various workshops.