Wintering Ground

Wintering Ground is a book of beginnings--fragile, fierce, and full of potential. Though these poems inhabit a world of cold earth and shadows, they lean steadily toward light, insisting that "rebirth requires death." The collection voyages through an underworld of despair only to rise into something more radiant. Rooted in the East Coast's varied terrain--from Florida's nocturnal highways to Virginia's shifting seasons--these poems map landscapes where transformation is always stirring beneath the surface.

Colin Bailes writes with the sensibility of a gardener and the insight of a mythmaker. Images of seeds, roots, and early green growth blend seamlessly with allusions to the ancient journeys of Odysseus and Aeneas, inviting readers into a space where past, present, and future entwine. Sensory language abounds: lemon trees release their fragrance, seasons turn, and the natural world becomes a guide for survival.

For all who have moved through darkness--through addiction, grief, or the many quiet devastations of being human--Wintering Ground offers solace and the patient promise of renewal. This luminous debut is an ode to return, to reunion, and to the restrained yet persistent act of reaching toward the sun.