Books

I published my first poetry collection in 2004, and since then I've released books steadily, working with a variety of publishers and in a variety of genres. My books include five poetry collections, two memoirs, an edited anthology, and a teaching text. I'm always happy to read or talk about my work and my trajectory as a writer. So be in touch if you have questions.

Accidental Hymn: Coming in May 2022! Sydney Lea calls it "a brilliant collection!" BJ Ward says it's "a serious delight, virtuosic and welcoming at once."

Chestnut Ridge, a verse-history of the coal-mining region of western Pennsylvania. The poet Adrian Blevins writes, "This sad, moral, and really smart book is essential reading for anyone interested in hearing a master poet sing an indispensable bereavement song."

A Poet's Sourcebook, an anthology of writings about poetry, from the ancient world to the present. Featured writers include Homer, Plato, Aristotle, William Shakespeare, William Wordsworth, John Keats, Edgar Allan Poe, Frederick Douglass, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Ezra Pound, Philip Levine, Adrienne Rich, Gary Snyder, and Rita Dove.

Same Old Story, a collection of sonnets, extended narratives, and shifting invented forms. "Potter's rushing lyric voice binds together the personal, cultural, and imaginative histories that create the inevitable complications of human character."

The Vagabond's Bookshelf: "In this luminous memoir, Dawn Potter considers her personal relationship with the books she has read and reread over the course of her life—works by Leo Tolstoy, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, James Baldwin, Malcolm X, and many others."

Boy Land & Other Poems: Dawn's first collection--a dive into memory, into the exigencies of motherhood, into the lure of language and story.

How the Crimes Happened: "By turns comic and melancholy, hungry and euphoric, these poems surrender again and again to the passions and panics of experience."

The Conversation: Learning to Be a Poet, a teaching text based on the methods Dawn has honed during her years spent directing the Frost Place Conference on Poetry and Teaching: "This book is a must read for any teacher who believes in the power of language to change the world for the better. You’ll find more strategies and poetry resources in this book than in any literature textbook, old or new, and these come straight from the mind of a living poet." 

Tracing Paradise, a memoir celebrating the writer's difficult yet transformative love affair with Milton’s glorious, irritating, inscrutable masterpiece.