Cypher Garden - Mary Kay Rummel

Mary Kay Rummel was  the first Poet Laureate of Ventura County, CA. Cypher Garden is her eighth published poetry book, her sixth full collection. The Lifeline Trembles, was co-winner of the 2014 Blue Light Press Award. This Body She’s Entered, her first book, won the Minnesota Voices Award for poetry and was published by New Rivers Press in 1989. Her work has appeared in numerous regional and national literary journals and anthologies and has received several awards, including six Pushcart nominations. Mary Kay has read in many venues in the US, England and Ireland and has been a featured reader at poetry festivals including Ojai and San Luis Obisbo, CA. She loves to perform poetry with musicians. A professor emerita from the University of Minnesota, Duluth, she and her husband, Conrad, teach part time at California State University, Channel Islands. They live and play with their grandchildren in California and Minnesota. marykayrummel.com

About the Cover Artist

Colleen McCallion is an artist from Laguna Beach, California. This is her fourth collaboration with Mary Kay Rummel after meeting at the Vermont Studio Center.

The cover oil painting titled  “Resting Mother” represents the artist, the mother, tired from her duties, holding her “seedlings”, her four children. The looming calla is her joy and her spirit, ever-present, even in sleep.