Walking the Burn

This collection, Walking the Burn, traverses the recursive nature of generational family trauma and resilience at a variety of intersections: childhood, infidelity, divorce, Mormon patriarchy, sibling death, hereditary mental illness, suicidality, ancestral white supremacy, racism, healing and reluctant forgiveness. This is a book of healing. A humble book. A humbling book. A book with dignity. Integrity. A book that dares us, too, to walk through the burn of our lives toward forgiveness, mindful action, and love.
-Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, author of Hush, All the Honey, and The Unfolding, former Western Slope Poet Laureate
of Colorado

The voice that inhabits the poems in this book is fearless and compassionate and in love with this life. Love of place, love of all sentient beings, love of family-Walking the Burn tells it all and tells it real, which must include the inevitable suffering we inherit as humans. As Rachel Kellum shows us in these poems, welcoming and fully engaging experience, all of it, can open us into the freedom of letting it go. In a time when so much of our bandwidth is bombarded with blah-blah and other static, I am grateful for her voice. Open this book and tune it in.
-Peter Anderson, author of Riding the Wheel, Heading Home: Field Notes, and Reading Colorado: A Literary Road
Guide (recipient of the Colorado Book Award)

At the center of these brave and beautiful poems - like at the center of all things courageous - shines the grace, pain and responsibility of motherhood which blooms again and again. The arc of the poems and all that shines beneath is filled with tenderness in the midst of grief, betrayal, guilt and anger, yet Kellum reminds us, again and again, that love's flame is eternal, inexhaustible, dear and necessary. These poems sing with integrity, intelligence and intensity - so honest ... so very human ... so clear in their purpose - to heal all that are lucky enough to read their wisdom.
-aaron a. abeyta, recipient of The American Book Award

Walking the Burn sets ablaze the testament of family and motherhood. It unfolds a compelling narrative that demands to be heard and deeply felt, serving as a poignant reminder of our shared humanity. These poems reach out to embrace, to push away, to feel, to love. They celebrate love in all its forms-intense, tender, and unfiltered.
-Julie Cummings, Author of Ride of My Life, president of Columbine Poets, Inc., president of the National Federation of
State Poetry Societies 2018-2022

Rachel Kellum fearlessly writes of all it means to be human in our present time. There is no denial or dismissal here. In Walking the Burn we are invited to share in a rich harvest of clear-eyed love and a litany of challenges met head on. We are shown the power and archetype of The Mother, the tenderness of The Lover, the sorrow of The Witness, the prescience of The Alchemist disguised as teacher. Kellum suggests "my stories will move and move through edgeless space like radio waves ..." She is right. Suffused with truth, visceral beauty, and resilience, her poems will endure in timelessness.
-Barbara Ford, author of In Pursuit of Happenstance, host of Poets and Minstrels on KHEN radio 2006-2025

Rachel Kellum lives at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains where she writes, walks, gardens, teaches, and loves the simplicity and silence of end-of-the-road, small-town living with her partner, pets and plants. You can find hundreds of her poems and links to her visual art on her blog wordweeds.com, in the 2012 chapbook, ah, published by Liquid Light Press, and in a variety of online journals and print anthologies.