Echo & Lightning (expanded version), is a book of encounters with migration and the divine by Sheila Packa. Exploring stories of women's intersections with God or the gods, the poems trace flights of the ecstatic and the irrevocable. The cover image is a painting by visual artist Cecilia Ramón. It is titled "Dawn."

Echo & Lightning won the 2011 Goldie Award for Poetry from the Golden Crown Literary Society.

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Kirsten Dierking (author of One Red Eye and Northern Oracle) writes: "So many poems in Echo & Lightning reveal what has to be given away in order to be filled with something greater--a more intense spiritual awareness, a fuller connection with the landscape, a more generous and all-encompassing love. Echo & Lighting transforms us into something freer, wilder, more given to loving, while reminding us that to fly is to risk leaving the old behind ... "

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Ellie Schoenfeld, author of The Dark Honey, writes: "These poems are the story of following one's own instincts to, in one way or another, migrate. They bring us to the exact moment when we surrender to our truest selves, when we allow ourselves to be transported, transformed, resurrected."

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Other information available on Sheila's blog

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The Northeast Minnesota Book Award reading team, May 2011 writes: "Lyrical, intimate, all while challenging your personal status quo or inertia. These poems by Sheila Packa evoke all the senses to come to attention - so you don't miss a single, heightened note. Written to be read to the voice of the cello, the experience of reading them to yourself is like swimming in very deep water (at night!)- exciting while pushing you beyond your present limits to LIVE more fully than you ever thought you might!"

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Wildwood River Press, 2010
ISBN: 9780984377718
Available in bookstores.
Distributor: Ingram
$15

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