Beth Copeland was born in Japan, where she spent her early childhood, as well as in India and the United States. Her first full-length poetry book Traveling through Glass received the 1999 Bright Hill Press Poetry Book Award. Her second book Transcendental Telemarketer was published by BlazeVOX in 2012. Her poems have appeared in literary journals and anthologies, including Aeolian Harp, Atlanta Review, New Millennium Writings, The North American Review, Pedestal Magazine, Pirene's Fountain, Poet's Market, Rattle, The Southern Poetry Anthology, and Tar River Poetry and have been featured on the CBS NewsHour website. Beth received her MFA degree from Bowling Green State University in Ohio and teaches creative writing at her undergraduate alma mater, St. Andrews University. She lives with her husband Phil Rech and hound dog Kasey in a log cabin in North Carolina.

Other poems by Beth Copeland in Verse Daily:
May 17, 2013:   "Thumbnail Moon" "On the drive home..."

Books by Beth Copeland:

Other poems on the web by Beth Copeland:
"Falling Lessons: Erasure One"
Five poems
Four poems
Two poems
"Cerebus"
"What I Remember as My Father Is Dying"
"Witch"
"Misconception"
Two poems
Six poems

About Blue Honey:

"The Blue Honey that flows through Copeland's collection by that name, through her parents' flurry of furious wings--that flows through Japan, her siblings, an Alaskan airport, and The South, where a childhood was held by the ankles upside down and slapped--that flows through a marriage, torn and mended, flows through it all with a fearless and loving spirit, with personality, humor, anger, and craft. Reader, I dare you to walk away from this elegy unmoved."
—Roger Weingarten

"Awesome, wonder,Beth Copeland's Blue Honey is a lyrical case study of loss and the ways in which it reverberates through a family's center. . . Copeland is a master storyteller; she weaves each of these narratives seamlessly through the text, and her ear for language—not to mention her eye for the most delicate of details—is a veritable honey trap for the reader."
—Destiny O. Birdsong

"The structure of Blue Honey . . . reenacts the circular journey that so many of us must make, from being cared for by our parents to ushering them through the mysterious borderland known as old age. Beth Copeland (writes) with breathtaking honesty . . . metaphorically fresh and formally inventive . . . Bravo to Copeland for not shying away from poetry's most arduous and important task, which is to write about life in a way that makes us feel less alone."
—Sue Ellen Thompson