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Bio
Heather Kolf received her Master of Arts in English from Wayne State University in Detroit where she focused on both creative writing and literature. Her poems have appeared in The Banyan Review and Peninsula Poets, and Tales of an Anxious Hiker (May 2025) will be her first poetry collection.She is also a recovering baseball blogger (under a pen name), and her past projects include a screenplay collaboration for the independent film Detroit Unleaded, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.Weekdays, she works as an Oncology Data Specialist, abstracting data for cancer research. On the weekends, she often spends time wandering around in the Michigan woods.Sometimes lost.Sometimes found.
Tales of an Anxious Hiker
Back in 2020 (the year that kept on giving), one of my sisters and I embarked on a hiking challenge – 52 hikes in 52 weeks. She lived in California and I'm in Michigan, so we did this separately, but together. Sometimes I sat down to write after hiking, mostly poetry. Some were poems about the hike itself, or nature being nature, but a lot of them were about some thought or idea that I tossed over and over in my mind while I hiked, tumbling these rocks until they crystallized (if I was lucky). I’d lost three significant people in my life that year, so I stomped out a lot of grief on the trails, and in the writing, too.A few months into the challenge, I joined an online writing group and, feeling the need to have a proper project, started calling my motley group of poems “Tales of an Anxious Hiker”. In the end, the 52-week hiking challenge took 59 weeks, but who's counting (certainly not my sister because we're not the least bit competitive). These are a few of the poems from that time.
Previously Published Poems
Prelude
one of my favorite ways to see the forest
is in the upside down reflection of tree tops in a still pond
or a swamp
I’m not pickythis trick is so marvelous to me
look! it’s nature
showing you nature
we like to think ours is the only perspective
but nature writes poems about itself in the water
and in the sky
all the stories of your life are written on the trail
and on the river
and everything you could ever know is in the dirt
and the leaves of trees
Published in the Banyan Review, Winter 2022
Grief is Expensive
I think I might be
buying a coffee table
in order to
avoid certain feelingswhat used to be ice cream
has become
furniture
I’m sure it’s a sign I’m maturingI know the feelings are coming
in quiet moments
I sense the rumble beneath my
feet the fire at my back
the fifty foot wave above me
which is paused for nowin mid airwhile I
place an order on Etsy
for a handmade herringbone coffee tablein toasted walnut
Published in the Banyan Review, Winter 2022
January
They say
the sun always risesTheyhave never seen a Michigan winter
Published in Peninsula Poets, Spring 2024
Yes, You Need Bug Spray
I’m in it for the pizza this hike
this muggy buggy boggy hike
as the mosquitoes swarm I remember the bug spray
I left in the car
I have no armor against the invading forces
and I am unshowered
I will undoubtedly be eaten alive smelly as I amwhich makes me think of Jeff Danielsnot because he’s smelly
no
because I am hiking in his hometown
and I wonder if I’ll run into him on the trail
my gritty, grimy, bitten-up self the humidity wrapping me in an invisible
film that only slows me down and suffocates like I’m pushing forward through
a giant outstretched saran wrap that still allows the bugs in of course
the sweat would drip I’m sure were it wetter than the air
but noinstead sweat sits on my skin and seeps into my hair and when I run the
back of my hand across the top of my forehead I only succeed in
smoothing out the drops into a fine glisten
I am coated in bodily fluids, dead bugs and swamp air
I am gross
I am miserable
I am certain I will run into Jeff Daniels todayHeading back to the car dreaming of deep dish and a shower I wondered if
my misery and pushing through had made me any
stronger
or if the fact that I was miserable at all
showed a weakness
or something else altogether
and I kind of wished my
wondering wandering questioning self
had
run into Jeff Daniels
because I’ve never met him but he seems like someone who might
want to talk about these kinds of things for a minuteor at least until he smelled me
Published in Peninsula Poets, Spring 2024
Contact
© Heather Kolf 2024. All rights reserved.