Forthcoming from Black Spring Press Group

Barrier Island

Barrier Island explores the psychology of a mother experiencing a breakdown of Self. What can she can claim as hers: her body and her children? Her children as her body? An exploration of language itself, including its arbitrary nature and inherent limitations, underpins her struggle. Running parallel is the geological erosion of the barrier islands (the “Outer Banks”) off the coast of North Carolina. “how extraordinary, how precarious it is.” says Soma Mei Sheng Frazier, author of Salve.

Forthcoming from UnCollected Press

Enough

“Enough” is a soul-piercing collection, resembling shattered glass that is both jagged and painful, and yet sparkles with reflective beauty. Any survivor of relational poison will recognize their own image within Harris’ work. The author has taken the complex and disorienting swirl of hidden abuse and has managed to strip it down to its purest form for the reader. “Enough” illustrates the journey from violent chaos to the confident stillness that comes only through freedom and healing. 

— Shannon Thomas, International bestselling author of Healing from Hidden Abuse 

“Enough” is haunting, unflinchingly honest, raw, introspective, and gorgeous as it traverses both the physical and emotional worlds. Harris is a master at calling attention to the paradoxes of life: strength amidst hardship and beauty shadowed by danger. This collection is a gift that offers, through the prism and power of distilled language, a rare view inside what it is for a woman to make her way to inner freedom. 

— Ann Randolph, Award-winning writer & performer of the one-woman show Inappropriate In All The Right Ways

“Enough” was a poetry revelation for me. In powerfully evocative lyrical style, Lyall Harris has created a work that is part novel, part memoir, and part exposé, all embodied in poems that frequently left me breathless. Harris has changed my understanding of what poetry can be. She is a voice for both the personal and societal liberation of women, but without ever saying so; instead, her writing brings the reader inside of women’s senses. You won’t need anything explained to you because you’ll be seeing, hearing, and tasting it all yourself. In simplest terms, this book mesmerized me.

— Lundy Bancroft, Author of Why Does He Do That? and The Joyous Recovery