The Wood That Will Be Used

Mary Leader is from Oklahoma. She is well on the other side of rearing children there, practicing law there, turning late to poetry there, and, at age 49, publishing her first book of poems, Red Signature, a selection in the prestigious National Poetry Series. She also spent years in scattered collegiate settings: Massachusetts, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, Tennessee, Indiana. Now she has moved back to Oklahoma, her vantage point. The majority of her work, meanwhile, has traveled to Great Britain. The Wood That Will be Used is her sixth collection, her fourth from Shearsman Books, whose present location is in Oxfordshire.