Poetry Collections

My poetry voice combines compressed elegiac witness with wry humor and scientific precision. I have seven full-length poetry collections and multiple chapbooks ready for publication, examining motherhood, coming-of-age, adventures in hiking, field biology, and life transformations with honesty and an occasionally irreverent eye

Full Length Books

  1. The Addition of Zero (48 poems) – Mathematical exploration of absence and erasure, using zero as lens to examine what gets counted and what vanishes from the equation
  2. The Adventure of Being (50 poems) – Field biology meets consciousness study in narrative arc through crocodile research, bear encounters, and the cost of curiosity
  3. Mother Load (61 poems) – The weight mothers carry, from pregnancy through raising a neurodivergent daughter, examining burdens we’re told to bear gracefully
  4. When Floating, Surrender is Required (48 poems) – Paradox of control and letting go, exploring what happens when you stop fighting the current
  5. Child-ish (in development) – “Normal dysfunction” of American girlhood, family dynamics we accept as okay, rural Kansas to self-discoveryPlus additional full-length collections in development

Chapbooks

  1. All the Zero’s (20 poems) – Women’s social invisibility examined through mathematical metaphor, lifetime inquiry into what Western logic erases
  2. Identity and Transformation (18 poems) – Journey from objectification to self-recognition, tempered by fire into something harder to break
  3. So, There I Am…Adventures (20 poems) – Misadventures in field biology, veterinary practice, and learning what the body can survive
  4. Womanhood (22 poems) – Gap between how women are perceived and who they actually are, claiming power in the space between
  5. My Own Voice Saying No (22 poems) – Postmenopausal reckoning, finding the word “no” after decades of accommodationPlus additional chapbook collections in developmentNote: Child-ish, Womanhood, Mother Load, and My Own Voice Saying No form a four-part series tracing women’s life stages from girlhood through postmenopausal power.

Tama Cathers

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