Other Times, Midnight
Andrea Ballou

Winner of the 2024 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize in Poetry

In Other Times, Midnight, her debut collection, Andrea Ballou explores the aftermath of loss—death, divorce, and departures—and asks the toughest questions: how do we contend with grief and remorse, and where does the spirit go to wait out trauma? 

Ballou’s poems fight an “impulse to not speak,” aware that naming, and speech itself, are a matter of life and death. Their startling and often humorous images (rooted in the fields, forests, and domesticity of rural life) are juxtaposed with oblique, at times irreverent, adaptations of Celtic and Greek myth and biblical stories.

For Ballou, language is both tool and weapon, as useful as a hoe, needle, and sword. Caught “in the mouth of midnight,” these poems wrestle with the numinous, their voices—cranky and cajoling, yet compassionate and vulnerable—urging us toward the fullness of being human.

“Other Times, Midnight is the perfect companion for difficult times.” —Cate Marvin

“I’ve been following Andrea Ballou’s poetry for many years now and have been consistantly amazed by the way she creates, as if from air, such vivid narratives…” —Kevin Prufer

Andrea Ballou's poems and reviews appear in Barrow Street, Copper Nickel, FIELD, Lily Poetry Review, Plume, The Missouri Review, Tupelo Quarterly, and elsewhere. She earned her PhD from the University of Chicago in Romance Languages and Literatures and an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University. Andrea teaches poetry at the VNA Senior Living in Somerville and divides her time between Somerville, Massachusetts and mid-coast Maine.

Trade Paperback / $17.00 (Can. $23.00) / ISBN 978-0-89255-608-3 / 64 pages / Poetry