NEWBERG, Ore. — Newberg writer and editor Tricia Gates Brown published her debut poetry collection, “Of a Certain Age,” in July through Newberg’s Fernwood Press, drawing on roughly 20 years of work to assemble the book.
“The large majority of the poems were written over the last 10-12 years, while others stretch beyond that,” Brown said.
The collection moves through the decades of a life, from the teens to the fifties, according to a press release from the author. Brown said the decade-based structure emerged as she considered how to organize narrative poems drawn from her own life.
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“As I thought about organizational structure, the structure of decades presented itself,” Brown said. “Then as I organized the poems into sections, I began to ponder how decades carry similar themes for many of us.”
Brown said she came to see each decade as carrying its own common thread: the teens with coming-of-age, the twenties with the loss of childhood dreams, the thirties with disillusionment, the forties with relationship rupture and reassessment, and the fifties with loss and a changed view of mortality.
“So though the narrative poems pull from my life, the themes of the collection are universal,” Brown said.
Poet Emmett Wheatfall, in a blurb included with the release, wrote that the poems carry “a subtle sense of faith and spirituality” alongside themes of love and heartbreak. Brown said spirituality tends to surface differently in her poetry than in her essay writing.
“In my fiction and poetry, spirituality mostly shows up subtly and indirectly,” Brown said. “In my essay writing, themes of spirituality are dealt with more directly, though in the last few years, even my essays tend to have a narrative feel, exploring big questions by way of storytelling.”
Brown said writing poetry requires a different process than her prose work, and that she typically steps away from daily life to do it.
“Poetry requires me to extricate myself from everyday life,” Brown said. “I take short writing retreats to write poetry. I’ll save up ideas, then spend most of three days doing little other than writing poetry. For me, poetry requires a dedicated server. I cannot take breaks from it to go change laundry and feed the cat and expect to get back to it in the same way.”
Several poems in the collection draw on Newberg and the surrounding area, Brown said, including one titled “Blackberries.” Others reference a farm in Yamhill and the north Oregon coast, where Brown lived for 16 years.
“Coastal imagery probably predominates,” Brown said.
“Of a Certain Age” is available in paperback through Fernwood Press and at Chapters Books in Newberg.
Brown holds a doctorate from the University of St Andrews. Her debut novel, “Wren,” won a 2022 Independent Publishers Award Bronze Medal for regional fiction and was a finalist for the National Indie Excellence Award.
Brown said she has two books scheduled for 2027: a novel from Vine Leaves Press in July, and a second poetry collection, titled “Blessings, Curses,” from Fernwood Press. She said she is also at work on a third novel, set in part at the Trappist Abbey in Lafayette, just outside Newberg.
