Interrogating the Abyss

An intimate collection of poems about mothers and daughters, female friendship, and memory.   Rebecca Hart Olander’s second poetry collection, Singing from the Deep End, chronicles coming of age in the '70s and '80s with a single mother, girlhood friends, the death of a dearest friend, and the poet’s own dive into motherhood. Rooted in the rocky coastline of Gloucester, Massachusetts, these poems thrum with music, mirrors, granite quarries, the Atlantic, potholder looms, feathered hair, and repurposed garments. Singing from the Deep End navigates how our ever-changing bodies can betray us and be betrayed, treading through layered griefs and surfacing into joy and reclamation. Anchored in the lives of women, this poetic mixtape is a love song to mothers, children, girlhood, and friendship.