Welcome to my author site
Bruce Lader’s recently published fourth collection of poetry, Embrace, is about the need for love and intimacy. Lader's second full-length book, Landscapes of Longing, presents political, social, and personal perspectives on justice. His first full-length book, Discovering Mortality, was a finalist for the Brockman-Campbell Award. He has published poems in over 100 international journals and anthologies, including Poetry, the New York Quarterly, the Humanist, International Poetry Review, Harpur Palate, New Millennium Writings, Margie, Poet Lore, Asheville Poetry Review, and Against Agamemnon: War Poems.
He is a former Writer-in-Residence at the Helene Wurlitzer Colony, and has received an honorarium from the College of Creative Studies at the University of California-Santa Barbara. A New York City teacher for many years, he is the founding director of Bridges Tutoring, an organization based in Raleigh, North Carolina, educating multicultural students.
You can order from the books page securely via Paypal.
Or email the author at BridgesBL@aol.com
He is a former Writer-in-Residence at the Helene Wurlitzer Colony, and has received an honorarium from the College of Creative Studies at the University of California-Santa Barbara. A New York City teacher for many years, he is the founding director of Bridges Tutoring, an organization based in Raleigh, North Carolina, educating multicultural students.
You can order from the books page securely via Paypal.
Or email the author at BridgesBL@aol.com
Poetry Reading at McIntyre's
Photo credit: Sara Claytor
After reading from Embrace at McIntyre's Fine Books on June 27, 2010. Deb Kaufman also read from Moon Mirror Whiskey Wind, and David T. Manning read from Constellations of Light. The North Carolina Poetry Society sponsored the event organized by Sara Claytor. McIntyre's is located in historic Fearrington Village, NC.
Book review excerpt
Embrace
Bruce Lader
Big Table Publishing Company
ISBN: 978-0-9842473-6-3
The word that overhangs Bruce Lader’s Embrace is “abundance.” The word itself is repeated only a couple times in the collection, but each poem speaks to the plenty in the lives of its featured couple. There’s a profusion of life—vegetation in the garden, bees at flower buds, birds at the feeder, the vivacity of the couple’s romance. Sex and the garden come together—with all the life they entail.
Lader makes it easy to dwell in his work. This is a book for those who want to inhabit a lovely space for 32 pages. It’s a feel-good read. Its situations and themes are repeated, creating a closed system, a sheltered paradise.
As is clear from the book’s cover, which features a man and woman sculpted in an embrace, the collection is of love poetry. Lader speaks of his own love life—capturing the sex and companionship he shares with his wife. He also occasionally writes love letters; addressing tenderly the “you” he references in poems like the sensual “3:00 A.M. Dinner”:
We went over every mouth-watering item on the menu,
you know the bill of fare I have in mind,
all of them were tempting,
none of them would keep.
So I got up, prepared your favorite hors d’oeuvre,
you know the saucy one that was,
it only urged on our appetite,
so we mixed together an entrée
(and juicy sides of other things)
The complete review by Janelle Adsit is in the August issue of Pedestal Magazine.
Bruce Lader
Big Table Publishing Company
ISBN: 978-0-9842473-6-3
The word that overhangs Bruce Lader’s Embrace is “abundance.” The word itself is repeated only a couple times in the collection, but each poem speaks to the plenty in the lives of its featured couple. There’s a profusion of life—vegetation in the garden, bees at flower buds, birds at the feeder, the vivacity of the couple’s romance. Sex and the garden come together—with all the life they entail.
Lader makes it easy to dwell in his work. This is a book for those who want to inhabit a lovely space for 32 pages. It’s a feel-good read. Its situations and themes are repeated, creating a closed system, a sheltered paradise.
As is clear from the book’s cover, which features a man and woman sculpted in an embrace, the collection is of love poetry. Lader speaks of his own love life—capturing the sex and companionship he shares with his wife. He also occasionally writes love letters; addressing tenderly the “you” he references in poems like the sensual “3:00 A.M. Dinner”:
We went over every mouth-watering item on the menu,
you know the bill of fare I have in mind,
all of them were tempting,
none of them would keep.
So I got up, prepared your favorite hors d’oeuvre,
you know the saucy one that was,
it only urged on our appetite,
so we mixed together an entrée
(and juicy sides of other things)
The complete review by Janelle Adsit is in the August issue of Pedestal Magazine.
Book review excerpt
Reading from Landscapes of Longing
In Landscapes of Longing. . . One poem after another proposes answers to the question: what can we learn from each other, from our lives as human beings, from the inevitability of disappointment, despair, longing in all its innumerable varieties. . . By writing about longing, failure, persistence, and perspective, Lader writes honestly, unflinchingly, about what it is to be human.
--Scott Owens, Editor of The Wild Goose Poetry Review
--Scott Owens, Editor of The Wild Goose Poetry Review
Book review excerpts
Featured reading from Discovering Mortality
Discovering Mortality is a book you should read. . . .Especially poignant is "Sabotage," a short but complicated poem about Lader's relationship with his father. . . .
--Joe Benevento, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Poetry Editor
. . . In Discovering Mortality, Bruce Lader gives the reader an entry into private lives and their dealings, told in vivid language that resonates because of the commonality, as in the poem "Testamentary." It is his war poems, such as "Empty" or "Fragments of War" that stay with the reader: "The gunman aims,/ a bullet screams/ and faster than the gods/ guided Achilles,/ a body enters earth,/ silent on impact/ as the echo of an asteroid."
--Robert L. Giron, editor of the Poetic Voices Without Borders anthology
--Joe Benevento, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Poetry Editor
. . . In Discovering Mortality, Bruce Lader gives the reader an entry into private lives and their dealings, told in vivid language that resonates because of the commonality, as in the poem "Testamentary." It is his war poems, such as "Empty" or "Fragments of War" that stay with the reader: "The gunman aims,/ a bullet screams/ and faster than the gods/ guided Achilles,/ a body enters earth,/ silent on impact/ as the echo of an asteroid."
--Robert L. Giron, editor of the Poetic Voices Without Borders anthology
Saturday Poetry Group
Saturday Poetry Critique Group with (L. to R.) Jo Taylor, Dave Manning, Alice Johansen, Bruce Lader, Marjorie McNamara, and Maureen Sherbondy (photographer). For this meeting on July 17, 2010 we met in the West Regional Library in Cary, NC. Other members of this monthly workshop group are Jodi Barnes and Arnie Johanson.