A Taste of Honey, Poetry & Love

Author Laura Boggess has a new title out for the Poetry Club Series: The Honey Field. The story was originally released serially, exclusively for Tweetspeak partners. It has now been edited further and put into beautiful book form! Today, we talk to the author, Laura Boggess, about this story that features nature poetry, bees, and love.

Tweetspeak Poetry (TSP): Laura, we are so curious. Where did you get the story idea for The Honey Field?

LB: I was reading Earth Song: A Nature Poems Experience (T.S. Poetry Press’s collection compiled by editor Sara Barkat) and I was struck by how these poems about the earth drew me into a felt presence of beauty and comfort. A story began taking shape in my mind about how poetry and nature can be healing companions—in many different kinds of grief.

TSP: Do you have any special love for bees? Or are you more like your protagonist: doubtful?

LB: I have always wanted to keep bees! But life is busy and I haven’t found the right time to seriously consider it yet. I have been slowly trying to turn my back yard into a more pollinator-friendly habitat—fostering growth of diverse native plants and limiting invasives and trying to find other ways to welcome pollinators. I’ve been considering putting up some wild bee homes, but I need to learn more about that first. I haven’t given up on an apiary some time in the future 🙂 .

TSP: This is your third book in the Poetry Club Series for T. S. Poetry Press. Wow! What makes the poetry club series a good fit for your writing?

LB: The poetry club series has been a perfect fit for my stories! All three of my books with T.S. Poetry Press have a significant poetry component (Several poems from Earth Song are featured in The Honey Field). I think all stories are better with poetry because life is a kind of poetry, isn’t it? It is the storyteller’s and the poet’s job to slow the reader down enough to recognize the poetry in their own life. TSP honors that very well.

It is the storyteller’s and the poet’s job to slow the reader down enough to recognize the poetry in their own life.

—Laura Boggess

TSP: Do you harbor a secret desire to run a food truck? (Or perhaps you’re more inclined to run a bed and breakfast, a la Mildred’s Garden?) If so, what would you call it? Would you offer peach tarts?

LB: I don’t think my culinary skills (or lack thereof) would support a food truck business! Same goes for a bed and breakfast, I guess. Though it has always been a secret dream of mine to run a retreat center where the sharing of food, ideas, art and music are central. I would just need the perfect team to pull it all off … Are you in??

TSP: Your stories usually revolve around love. Both friendship and romantic love. For you, what’s so alluring about the topic of love?

LB: What about love is not alluring? One of my readers who happens to be an old friend said it best. I expressed surprise when he told me he had read and enjoyed Mildred’s Garden. This guy is a real “man’s man.” Ex military. Big hunter and outdoorsman. Not exactly my target reader for Mildred’s Garden. When I said something of that nature to my friend, he said, “Laura, guys like love stories too. And let me tell you a secret: Every story is really a love story. Of some kind, anyway.”

TSP: We hope you’ll write yet another story for the Poetry Club Series in the future. Anything simmering under the surface? (Can we make requests? 😉 )

LB: There’s ALWAYS something simmering under the surface 🙂 . Suggestions are always welcome. Fair warning, however: it may manifest itself in surprising ways on the page!

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T.S. Poetry

Helping you get inspired. With poetry & poetic things.

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