GATHERING THE PIECES OF DAYS by LEEANN PICKRELL: A Celebration of the Feminine Art of Paying Attention
Portland, OR—April 8, 2025—Unsolicited Press proudly announces the release of Gathering the Pieces of Days by LeeAnn Pickrell, a poetry collection that reminds us of the radical power in simply noticing. In a culture that demands women perform, produce, and push forward without rest, Pickrell’s poems assert a quiet rebellion: to gather, to reflect, to hold space for the overlooked moments that shape our lives.
Through fifty-two poems—one for each week of the year—Pickrell invites readers to witness the beauty, frustration, and complexity of the everyday. These are not poems of spectacle but of substance, lifting the mundane into the realm of the sacred. From the ritual of morning coffee to the slow unraveling of self-doubt, from the absurdities of daily life to moments of sudden clarity, Gathering the Pieces of Days is an anthem for those who refuse to let time slip by unnoticed.
Pickrell’s voice is both unflinching and tender, crafting a space where women’s daily experiences—so often dismissed as unimportant—become poetry itself. As poet Nina Lindsay notes, Pickrell “wields the power of aggregation” to reveal the extraordinary within the ordinary, honoring every emotion, every bite of food, every fleeting encounter. Carolyn Miller calls it “a chronicle of a life filled with the mundane and the sublime,” while Dale M. Kushner describes it as “a book of love poems to life.”
Advance Praise for Gathering the Pieces of Days
“Have you ever gotten to the end of your week feeling like the journey there was momentous, yet, when asked what happened, had a hard time explaining? Pickrell, undeterred, forges through a whole year of days with a voice that is disarmingly straightforward, modest in its approach and scope, yet generous and often startling. Coffee, baseball, work, walks, naps, irritations, revelations, moments of grace and gracelessness…. Aggregation is underrated, and Pickrell knows exactly how to wield this power, by just being willing to see and hold everything, the ugly and the gorgeous, the unimportant or unassuming. She shows us chosen moments like beach rocks: ones we might not have picked up ourselves, yet each one revealing how time shapes us.”
—Nina Lindsay, author of Because and Today’s Special Dish
“‘What are days for?’ asks Philip Larkin in one of his most memorable poems. The answer is, simply, that they are for living, the gift we are given, over and over, from the day we are born, to make of what we can. In Gathering the Pieces of Days: A Year in Poetry, LeeAnn Pickrell’s debut collection, days are for working, playing, mourning, loving, and finding poetry in ordinary life. Beginning with journal entries written over the space of one year, Pickrell revised her work into fifty-two poems for each week of 2018. The result is the chronicle of a life filled with the mundane and the sublime, small triumphs and inevitable failures, beauty and sorrow and sudden joy, and most of all, making art from the gift of days.”
—Carolyn Miller, author of Route 66 and Its Sorrows
“The 17th-century Japanese poet Bashō famously told his students: ‘To learn about the pine tree, go to pine trees, to learn from the bamboo, study the bamboo.’ Four centuries later, LeeAnn Pickrell has written a collection of spare elegant poems that, like the haiku master’s, celebrate the beauty and sacred beingness of ordinary life. In tracking our shifting perception of reality, Gathering the Pieces of Days unfolds as a litany of non-events that reveal the preciousness of the mundane. Whether noting the sensual delight of a sushi roll or Danish jazz, the author casts a spell not unlike the experience of chanting a familiar word until it lifts us into mystery. If attention is love, as some say, this is a book of love poems to life.”
—Dale M. Kushner, author of The Conditions of Love and M
LeeAnn Pickrell is a poet, editor, and managing editor of Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche. Her work has appeared in One Art, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Loud Coffee Press, Atlanta Review, and more. Her chapbook Punctuated was published by Bottlecap Press, and her forthcoming book Tsunami will be released by Unsolicited Press in 2026. She lives in Richmond, California, with her partner and two fabulous cats, continuously gathering the pieces of her own days.
Gathering the Pieces of Days is available for preorder now and releases April 8, 2025.
ISBN: 978-1-963115-38-3
Genre: Poetry
Distributor: Asterism Books
