{"id":4920,"date":"2026-04-26T22:54:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T02:54:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/?p=4920"},"modified":"2026-04-27T07:23:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T11:23:14","slug":"patricia-joslins-new-poetry-collection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/blog\/2026\/04\/26\/patricia-joslins-new-poetry-collection\/","title":{"rendered":"Patricia Joslin\u2019s New Poetry Collection\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Before I write a Storied Charlotte blog post, I often exchange numerous email messages with the person whose work I am featuring in that particular blog post, and that is certainly the case with this blog post about Patricia Joslin and her new poetry collection titled No Packing Necessary:  Poems for the Solo Journey.  <\/em>Patricia emailed me about a month ago and informed me that her forthcoming poetry collection would soon be published by Main Street Rag.  I responded by saying that I would write blog post about her new poetry collection closer to the book\u2019s official release. Since I knew that she planned to launch the book in early May, I emailed her last week and asked her if she could send me a write up about her new poetry collection that I could include in this week\u2019s blog post.  Her response surprised me. She wrote, \u201cI am in Morocco at the tail end of a vacation, but I will be home on Sunday.\u201d She said that she would send me something as soon as she returned to Charlotte. I told her that I do not get many emails from Morocco. I agreed to wait until I heard from her before writing this week\u2019s post.  Sure enough, on Sunday night she sent me a write up about how her new collection came to be.  Here is what she sent to me:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I grew up in southern Wisconsin and raised my family in Minnesota. My husband and I, both weary of the endless cold and gray skies, dreamt of a change for our retirement years. Our daughter attended Davidson College for her undergraduate program. We visited often, and decided the weather here was more appealing than what we lived with in the Midwest. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the fall of 2002, as our son started his freshman year at the University of Michigan, we took the leap and settled in Charlotte, embarking on a new chapter. I often joke that I spent my first fifty years up North and plan to spend my last fifty basking in the Southern warmth.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But life, as it often does, shifted unexpectedly. In 2018, after forty-one years of marriage, my husband died of pancreatic cancer. Managing loss is an intensely personal experience. Writing has always been my refuge, and in the aftermath of loss, I sought creative ways to process my grief. At the time, the Levine Cancer Institute offered writing workshops for cancer patients and their caregivers. Meeting weekly with others familiar with cancer who wanted to write about their experiences (with the guidance of a therapist) was a great start for me. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In early 2019 I discovered Charlotte Center for the Literary Arts (Charlotte Lit). I began attending weekly open-studio Pen to Paper classes. There, I explored writing personal essays, flirted with the idea of a memoir, and finally\u2014unexpectedly\u2014fell in love with poetry. A class with Dannye Romine Powell opened the door to a whole new way of expressing myself.  Dannye\u2019s teaching was transformative, and in 2021, I joined a cohort of eleven poets as part of the inaugural Chapbook Lab, a year-long workshop program at Charlotte Lit. The experience was intense, challenging, and deeply rewarding. Each poet was paired with a mentor; I was fortunate to work with the acclaimed Lola Haskins. Our shared goal was to create a book of poetry by the end of the year\u2014a task that required both vulnerability and discipline.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2023, my first book, <\/em>I\u2019ll Buy Flowers Again Tomorrow: Poems of Loss and Healing, was published by Charlotte Lit Press. The poems echo the grief of the cancer journey so many face today. Yet they offer the promise of hope and healing to those who remain behind. I\u2019ve received heartfelt messages from recent widows who found in my poetry a way to understand their own grief.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

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My second book was just published by Main Street Rag.  <\/em>No Packing Necessary: Poems for the Solo Journey is a collection of narrative poetry meant for those recovering from loss. The title, drawn from a line in one of the poems, speaks to the timelessness of what we carry in our hearts\u2014memories, love, longing. These poems explore widowhood, aging, and the quiet magic of life in later years, inviting readers to find their own path forward. It has now been eight years since my husband\u2019s death, yet grief remains a companion, sometimes surfacing unexpectedly. Not long ago, I watched Casablanca and found myself sobbing for lost love. The final poem in my book, \u201cSunday Morning in the City of Love\u201d references the famous line\u2026\u201d We\u2019ll always have Paris.\u201d Of course I cried.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2024 I moved to The Village on Morehead, a retirement community close to Uptown.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Village is a phenomenal place to live, filled with vibrant people and a motto that encourages us to \u201cLive Life Boldly.\u201d Please join us on May 5th from 4 to 5:30 pm as we celebrate Cinco de Mayo and the launch of my new book at The Village. To learn more about the event, order your copy, or read some of my poetry, visit my website:\u00a0patriciajoslin.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I congratulate Patricia on the publication of this new poetry collection.  To give readers a sense of this book, I offer this blurb by David E. Poston. \u201c\u2018The divine exists even in the darkest places,\u2019 writes Joslin, but these poems are far from dark. Though many deal with aging, mortality, and grief, they exhibit grace, vulnerability, and empathy. She renders the world in vivid sensory detail\u2014a flash of cardinal\u2019s wing, rock wrens rising in song, the scent of her father\u2019s pipe tobacco\u2014and moves us to see the \u2018bliss in the mystery of it.\u2019\u201d I am pleased that Patricia has been able to find a bit of the divine right here in Storied Charlotte.   <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before I write a Storied Charlotte blog post, I often exchange numerous email messages with the person whose work I am featuring in that particular blog post, and that is certainly the case with this blog post about Patricia Joslin and her new poetry collection titled No Packing Necessary:  Poems for the Solo Journey.  Patricia emailed me about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":202,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[390,138],"class_list":["post-4920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-storied-charlotte","tag-patricia-joslin","tag-poetry-collection"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/202"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4920"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4920\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4927,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4920\/revisions\/4927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}