Angela Hoffman

CONTACT:
Email: hoffmangie@gmail.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/angelahoffmanpoet
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/author/amazon.comangelahoffman

BIO:
Angela Hoffman’s poetry collections include Hold the Contraries 2024, Olly Olly Oxen Free (nominated for the Eric Hoffer Book Award), and Resurrection Lily (Kelsay Books). She placed third in the WFOP Kay Saunders Memorial Emerging Poet in 2022 and was a runner up in the 2023 Wisconsin Sijo competition. Her poems have been published in Agape Review, Amethyst Review, As Surely As the Sun, Blue Heron Review, Braided Way, Bramble, Cosmic Daffodil Journal, Halfway Down the Stairs, Last Leaves, Moss Piglet, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Muleskinner Journal, Of Rust and Glass, One Art, Poetica Review, Silver Birch Press, Solitary Plover, Sparks of Calliope, Storyteller Poetry Review, Tabi Po Literary, The Enchanted Circle Newsletter, The Orchards Poetry Journal, The Poet Magazine, The Wee Sparrow Poetry Press, Verse-Virtual, Visual Verse, Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets’ Museletter and Calendar, Whispers and Echoes, Wilda Morris’s Poetry Challenge, Writing In A Woman’s Voice, and Your Daily Poem. Her poems have also appeared in Amethyst Review Poetry Anthology: All Shall Be Well and The Poet Anthology: Our Changing Earth. Angela lives in rural Wisconsin. 

PUBLICATIONS:
Hold the Contraries (Kelsey Books, 2024), also available on Amazon
Olly Olly Oxen Free (Kelsay Books, 2023), also available on Amazon
Resurrection Lily (Kelsay Books, 2022), also available on Amazon

Poetry

Grackles in Ukraine

The grackles with their helmets of blue, beady yellow eyes
congregate in huge flocks, forage in the fields
but move into civilian yards, making their presence known
with their loud and audacious thievery, grand display of size.
You see the babies and eggs they’ve stolen from their nests
dropped from the skies to the cement.
We shudder at the atrocity.
The only birds that will hang out with them are other grackles
blackbirds, crows, birds of the same feather.
They roost in the trees planning their next attack.
Upon their retreat, the songbirds return
among the sunflowers.

Placed third in the Kay Saunders Memorial Emerging Poet category of the WFOP Triad Contest, 2022

Compressing Time into Wide-Open Moments

The fog curtains, then lifts slowly, revealing five stately pines 
compressed in line, in their uniform greens
armed heavy, bowing toward me
hijacking the view beyond, shuttering the house on the other side
conifering scent all around.

The sunlight lichens the air. I moss myself into green
rabbit hole into my nest on the patio chair. 
The blue sky breathes, crisping the morning
while the racooning in my mind ceases.

I’m just sparrowing away my time, being
the buzzing bumble bees, the balming flowers
the holy-spirited chime
the mourning doves, the chipmunks on retreat
the fountain blessing
seeding my dreams
compressing my time into the briefest of moments.
This place wide-opens me.

First appeared in Lothlorien Poetry Journal