Coming soon is Laurie’s collection of poetry and paintings. Each poem is paired with a painting. Together the pairs become a moving sequence bringing to life loving during peacetimes and transitioning to loving persisting during wartimes.  When love endures in the aftermath of war, the long healing process becomes less and less daunting because a sense of the renewed sense of belonging.

 

We Are in All of Us in Love and War

 

Overview

This is a groundbreaking, imaginative collection of poems and paintings, paired with each other, by talented artist, poet, and psychoanalyst Laurie Hollman. Ekphrasis is an ancient literary practice that describes visual art with text. Artist, poet, and psychoanalyst Laurie Hollman’s ekphrastic collection of her poems, each associated with one of her paintings, sensitively reveals how giving and receiving love during peacetime and wartime endows individuals with emotional strength. Love that can endure in the aftermath of war and violence can support those suffering from traumatic grief to recover a sense of belonging so essential to potential healing.

Viewing Laurie’s opening painting alongside her “Artist’s Notes,” she explains how we turn to poetry and paintings to express and learn about ourselves.

Our senses lay the groundwork for how art and aesthetics offer viewers pathways to amplify their mental health and well-being. When we get into the flow of our emotions, the limbic system deep within the forebrain processes our feelings…When a poem resonates with us, it does so at a neurological level associated with meaning-making. Poetry is a safe way to engage with difficult emotions. When we interact with artwork, we may feel the world changing in a new way. When viewing poetry and paintings together, we may be biologically changed and remarkably transformed.

Laurie invites the reader/viewer to take time to view each painting and the poetic lines related to it, enabling a process of discovery that offers new meanings as sensory aesthetics inform feelings and bring a sense of enlightenment not experienced before. Unlike art books perused quickly, Laurie Hollman hopes that there will be pauses, holding a portrait’s gaze or following the paths in a landscape, inspiring feelings of introspection, transformation, and enlightenment as time passes in musing reveries, like meditation, to take hold. She encourages each reader to allow their awareness to hover over paintings, their gaze on an aspect of a scene or portrait not immediately noticed, so that increased insight may be gained and lost and gained again.”

 

Endorsement

 

“Hollman’s literary and visual artistry are on display in this heartfelt, diverse collection of poems and artwork about love and war. The book’s simplicity is a strength; most poems are brief and to the point. ‘Tender Trees’ is only six lines long, but this poem crafts a beautiful metaphor of a loved one. The poet’s descriptions are unique and sensory-rich, as in ‘a two-part sun that glares like / a half-cut lemon and the perfumed earthy air of the outdoors.’

The poet experiments with spacing and punctuation in poems like ‘Unwalled Wells’ and ‘Feelings of Voiceless Women,’ lending variety to the reading experience. Hollman is equally talented and versatile in her paintings. The impressive landscapes serve as visual counterparts to each poem, capturing the quiet wonder of her surroundings, while the portraits convey the soulfulness and personality of their subjects.

The darker, abstract artwork in the book’s final section mirrors the moral murkiness of war. Somber poems such as ‘Helmets of War’ unflinchingly describe battlefield horrors, like how ‘rained bodies soundlessly sink in beach sands.’

A tender and virtually stunning book…”

 

–Kirkus Reviews, 2026

 

Book Groups should keep a lookout for this upcoming book with a fantastic reading guide that will challenge and excite reading group members to share insights and gain an ease in reading poetry never before experienced along with paintings in various media that enhance each poem.  A rare experience awaits book group readers and viewers!!