"The poems in Iva Ticic’s The Skywriter reveal the sacred in the seemingly small things of everyday, and the eternal in the course of nature and the passing of time. These are modern folk songs of love and belonging with real hurts, and we are members of her choir, invited to join in the chorus. There are captivating moments when Ticic observes yearnings she scarcely knew she had but made it her business to get to know well. How can we help but fall deeply when what we feel is real? Unstintingly, she dips her toe into new intimacies, learning by observation. Hitching one’s heart to another can allow one to more easily navigate the territory of one’s own belonging and chart the experiences that make us feel alive.
We find healing by accompanying Ticic on the journey, considering her expansive vision and the lengths she has come while scratching this surface, the milestones that mark what she has conquered, rich with “Heritage. History, Culture. Hope”: milestones that sustain us all the way through to the final everlasting word.”
SuSan McKeown
Grammy-winning singer-songwriter; founder and director of Cuala Foundation
“‘I am not one/to harp on heritage/but there is a calm that comes/ with sitting still in where you are from,’ writes Iva Ticic. A high school teacher across the globe, this talent shakes hands with the ineffable. Calm at home, she can’t sit still. Where is home? Zest propels our poet-pilot whose elegant, wistful poems float in the sky of these pages as she lands in China and New York. Left Croatia in her twenties. That matured her. Left her culture and mastered another language. That gave her inexhaustible detachment. Can’t teach that. She makes a harp of her heritage and adds beautiful music to this world. Hvala, Iva Ticic.”
Spencer Reece
author of “The Clerk’s Tale”, “The Road to Emmaus”, and “The Secret Gospel of Mark: A Poet’s Memoir”
“A page-turner in the best sense, The Skywriter is the kind of collection one would read in one sitting if it weren’t so rich in lived experience as to force the reader to take breaks to process it. These are cosmopolitan poems whose situations and environments are rendered all the more vividly because nothing is taken for granted. Lyrical, philosophical, and imagistic, these poems examine personal identity and the complex and paradoxical nature of relationships, achieving universal resonance through hard-earned specificity. I would be surprised to find a reader who did not recognize themselves in at least some of these poems. This book draws us in, then it overwhelms us, and then we emerge enlightened.”
Anton Yakovlev
Author of “Ordinary Impalers”, “The Last Poet of the Village”, and “Chronos Dines Alone”, which was the winner of the 2018 James Tate Poetry Prize
