Book Launch – Sisters in Time, By Rosemary Herbert

A Pagan’s Gift: Winchester Archaeology & Poetry Talk 

If ever there was a gift to a poet, it is the chance to unearth the burial of a young pagan woman during an archeological dig in a fourth-century, Roman-era cemetery in Winchester. Rosemary Herbert will celebrate the launch of her poetry collection, Sisters in Time, on Sunday, 11 October at 2 pm at the City Museum, The Square, Winchester. Her presentation will weave poetry into reminiscences about her life-changing work with the Winchester City Rescue Archaeology team during the summer of 1973. The poetry is anchored in the dig experience and is also a love song to the city of Winchester. 

Rosemary Herbert is a writer whose work spans genres. Her poetry collection, Sisters in Time is inspired by her work unearthing a pagan burial during an archeological dig in a fourth-century, Roman-era site in Winchester. Her poems are published in Tupelo Quarterly, Radar Poetry, The Last Milkweed (Tupelo Press), Remembering William Butler Yeats (Moonstone Press), and more. Her interviews are found in The Paris Review and the Harvard Review. Her eight books in the crime & mystery genre include the Edgar Award-nominated The Oxford Companion to Crime & Mystery Writing, A New Omnibus of Crime, and Front PageTeaser: A Liz Higgins Mystery. She lives in Akron, Ohio.  

PRAISE FOR SISTERS IN TIME 

“I enjoy and admire Rosemary Herbert’s fresh way of thinking about the past with all the resemblances differences and revelations it offers the present. Shaped poems and sonnets, archaeology and mystery. I salute this poet’s distinctive wit and intensity.”  

 – ROBERT PINSKY, three-time U.S. Poet Laureate 

“In this brave and deeply original work, Rosemary Herbert invites us to befriend the past, hear history’s call, and become more patient in the face of death. Mysteries appear before us, as the dead return to speak: “I’m still here, just listen.” The poet brings a “tenderness akin to reverence” to her work of weaving wonder and washing skulls. Here we commune with the dead and find a way to rescue them from oblivion. We become witness to history, the archeologist’s accomplices.”  

– DEBORAH LEIPZIGER, poet 

“Marrying the archeologist’s patience with the poet’s heightened gift of perception, Rosemary Herbert reminds us that all of our histories are entangled in mystery…. Again and again, we are reminded to ask not for whom the bell tolls. Long established as one of our pre-eminent prose stylists, for Rosemary Herbert, this is something new, rare, and wonderful, this most profound of poetry debuts, marvelous, wholly present, and ours for the taking.”  

– JEFFREY LEVINE, poet 

Her website is www.rosemaryherbert.com