Poets with Chester ties recognized Former Chester resident’s first book named an 'impressive indie press book' for 2021

Susan Powers Bourne sees first published works in literary mag

Susan Powers Bourne of Chester recently had several poems published in The Knot Magazine of literature. Bourne says these are her first published poems.

Bourne says she is “a lifelong learner and elder yogini who creates pieces of haiku, found art, found poetry, vignettes of women born, and daily explorations of color, form, texture, and sound.”

You can read her poetry at Knot by clicking here. Samples of Bourne’s ongoing visual and verbal works may be found at susanpowersbourne.net.

1st book of poetry by former
resident tapped as 2021
‘impressive indie press book’

Former Chester resident Diane Lowell Wilder, who grew up in the Stone Village, started writing for The Message for the Week as a teenager. More than 40 years later, she’s still writing.

Her first book of poetry, Leap Thirty, came out this fall and was just named one of Independent Book Review’s 35 impressive indie press books of 2021.

Several of the poems in the collection, like “Mud Season” and “Landlocked, 1972,” draw direct inspiration from her formative years in Chester. “Chester and its powerful beauty just get into your bones,” Wilder says. “Although I wasn’t born there, I consider the town to be my true place of origin, and it has continued to reverberate through my life and creative work for decades.”

Her next writing project will be loosely based on the Stone Village and the imagined lives of the masons and laborers who built its homes, shops, school and church.

Leap Thirty is available from June Road Press, a small literary press based outside of Philadelphia, where Wilder currently lives.