Andrea Potos is the author of eight poetry collections, including A Stone to Carry Home (Salmon Poetry,), Arrows of Light (Iris Press), An Ink Like Early Twilight (Salmon Poetry), We Lit the Lamps Ourselves (Salmon Poetry) and Yaya's Cloth (Iris Press). Several of her books received Outstanding Achievement Awards in Poetry from the Wisconsin Library Association. She received the William Stafford Prize in Poetry from Rosebud Magazine, and the James Hearst Poetry Prize from the North American Review. Her poems have been featured widely in print and online, including Verse Daily, Your Daily Poem, Women Artist's Datebook (Syracuse Cultural Workers, 2018 and 2019), Poetry East, Women's Review of Books, Atlanta Review, Southern Poetry Review, Poem, Sou'wester, Greensboro Review, Adanna, Presence, Literary Mama, Mom Egg Review, Sunlight Press, and many others, including I Feel A Little Jumpy Around You (Simon & Schuster), and Claiming the Spirit Within (Beacon Press). Andrea worked for many years as a bookseller in independent bookstores. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

Other poems by Andrea Potos in Verse Daily:
November 16, 2018:   "Visiting Your Grave" "I found the path behind the row..."
January 14, 2018:   "Van Gogh's Bedroom" "Forget the filmed theories, written explications..."

Books by Andrea Potos:

Other poems on the web by Andrea Potos:
Two poems
"Yaya's Sweets"
Three poems
Three poems
"Apology in Rome"
Three poems
Two poems
Four poems
"In The Beginning, The Lens"
Five poems
Two poems
Daughter, Home"

Andrea Potos on Twitter.

About Mothershell:

"Think of a mother cupping a child's face in her hands, and you have the shell of Mothershell, Andrea Potos' tender and luminous new collection. Yes, these are poems of loss: her mother's cancer and treatments, her death and the grief that follows, but these are also poems that celebrate the chord, 'the unseen thread' that binds mothers and daughters forever. Potos imagines heaven as an eternal breakfast, mother and daughter drinking our coffee/black and filled to the top. Coffee without bitterness or sweet / but somewhere in the perfection / of the middle. Here are poems that celebrate the power of presence, poems of travel: Ireland, France, Italy, ekphrastic poems that illuminate paintings. In 'What the Poem Did,' Potos writes It became a spine/walked me upright/ into the day, and this is what this book does, walks with each of us and sustains us in the long journey of all of our ordinary days."
—Barbara Crooker

"In this stunning, new collection by Andrea Potos, we find beautiful windows into the life of abiding love—each poem steeped in elegant imagery and story. A simple moment of sharing eggs over-easy with her mother, or witnessing her daughter's essence igniting in the Italian light, is all we need, to know the deep connection this poet has to others. Potos offers up these poems as prayer and healing. This collection is a love letter to memory, hope, and presence. She brings memories to life so vividly, that we, too, can hear her mother's voice through glittering veins of stone. Gentle in their touch, these beautifully sculpted poems pay tribute to the quiet strength needed for the loss you know is coming and the spaces left behind."
—Cristina M. R. Norcross

"In Mothershell, Andrea Potos uses light and color and sound as expertly as she did in her recent chapbook, Arrows of Light. In this new collection, visual and tactile arts expand metaphors even further, weaving rich phrases such as all of them spun and still spinning / with filaments of unstoppable light into a glorious, whole cloth that not only honors memories but recreates tangible moments with her mother and other loved ones. Potos explores relationships in deftly conveyed, universal allegories that touch our innermost understanding. As so aptly expressed in 'Writing My Mother,' Potos does her writing on the top of light, her hands passing / across brightness and slanting shadows. Every bit of light and shadow in Mothershell reflects a gifted writer's heart and mind."
—C. Ann Kodra