"...this morning I read Kelly Grace Thomas’s new book, Future Tense (Alice James Books) in anticipation of her book launch this afternoon. It’s a gorgeous memoir in verse bursting with grief and love and hope."

— Melinda Clemmons, author of Closer

Lordship House is thrilled to host the fabulous poet, Kelly Grace Thomas, for her book launch on Thursday, October 22nd from 6 - 7:30 pm at Obodo Serendipity Books in Stratford!

Kelly will read poems from her new book of poetry, Future Tense, out now with Alice James Books (more info below). Michael Todd Cohen and Adrian Dallas Frandle, co-organizers of Lordship House, will also do short readings of some of their poetry and prose work to celebrate the launch.

About Future Tense:

A searing and tender poetry collection about infertility, longing, grief, family, motherhood, and the impossible tension between hope and loss.

In Future Tense, Kelly Grace Thomas spends three years trying for a child who never arrives. As she struggles with infertility, her mother is dying of Stage IV uterine cancer, and the desire for a child turns urgent—a countdown. As her mother’s health deteriorates, time narrows, pressure builds, and the clock refuses to slow. As her marriage strains and the world remakes itself without her, Thomas refuses to give up. The fertility clinic is the coldest place on earth; still, she keeps going—through years of medical gaslighting, IVF consults, mounting debt, and backhanded blame—finally welcoming her daughter through adoption just months before her mother’s death.

Intimate and unflinching, Future Tense interrogates the intertwined joys and griefs of womanhood and motherhood—and how biology can sometimes turn against us. Thomas approaches illness and loss with clarity and care, writing with a generosity that welcomes readers in. Despite their brevity, these poems refuse despair, finding meaning and connection even in the hardest seasons of life.