"My first poetry collection, a chapbook, was nearly complete.
For decades, I made my living as an arts journalist, editor, curator, marketing/PR professional, and adjunct writing professor. Then, with my father’s passing, I moved back to Arizona and began developing my next career as a poet and essayist. After taking numerous craft workshops, joining writing groups for feedback, and working through an online chapbook class, I had 15 poems, five of which had been published. A chapbook was clearly the essential next step in establishing my credibility as a poet.
But I was still teaching and doing arts journalism. And the poems are extremely personal. Writing what I needed to release, the poems reflect desert healing to resolve past trauma, encompass an ecological point of view rooted in landscape and history, and eliminate binaries dividing bodies (landscape, human, and the more-than-human). Coyote is a recurring companion, reminding me to let go of the past and embrace every moment in my high-desert mountain landscape.
I needed a getaway. Somewhere private, quiet, and inspiring. A place where I could clear my schedule, put my head fully into the work, and get my manuscript ready for submission to chapbook contests. I found Dorland Mountain Arts, while looking through Poets & Writers. It was the right place.
Moreover, I had applied for, and received, an Artist Opportunity Grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts. The funding helped cover my travel to and from Dorland, my stay in Roripaugh Cottage (my new home away from home), and a manuscript consultation after I returned to Arizona. So, as soon as I arrived at Dorland, after settling in (and reveling in my good fortune—the perfect place at the perfect time), I got to work.
Setting up a table on the porch, I laid out my 15 poems to hone in on common themes and a narrative arc, decide on the most compelling sequence and structure, revise existing poems, and draft new poems to fill any gaps. There was much arranging and re-arranging. Long sits with my printouts as I penciled in revisions. Trips back inside to the computer to make changes. Long lists of potential titles. The deletion of several poems. And one morning, I woke up, went outside with my coffee, then dove back in: I had a new poem (and one of my blurb writers said this was her favorite):
unveiling
none of you are mine
nor anyone’s –
we are only our own
selves – yet,
i long to inhabit
that place where
our bodies –
mountainous, rocky,
cleft, spired, mounded,
branching, shedding –
creek-cooled, sunbaked,
lava-pitted, bony –
feathered, scaled,
furred, barked – of tooth,
beak, skin, leaf, claw,
eye, wing, paw –
do not dissolve
but other boundaries do
Coming at the end of the collection, the poem indicates – with the use of the lower case – a true dissolution of difference between my own body and self, and that of the landscape and its inhabitants.
The collection, Sandstone and Kin, was selected for publication from Finishing Line Press (FLP is a woman-owned, BIPOC, independent publishing company) from my submission to its New Women’s Voices Chapbook Contest. The book is available for pre-order through July. Here’s the book description I crafted after many iterations (and much input from readers):
In this debut poetry collection, Camille LeFevre ventures beyond the postcard-pretty optics of Northern Arizona’s spectacular red-rock landscape into an eco-poetics of home. Layered sandstone, coyote scat, antler shed, and cactus bone spirit these poems. The longing for kinship in her “terra-stained gaze” dissolves the boundaries between nature and human: All life is sentient, her body mirrors biomes. The high desert and its more-than-human inhabitants transform her past trauma into “one true nature.” Together, poet and readers find solace within “a canyoned embrace.”
I recently returned to Dorland for a short-stay, in order to finalize an essay. The next day, news of my book’s pre-order status arrived in my inbox. I have such gratitude for Dorland, my mentors and readers, and to FLP. If you’re in Northern Arizona on October 22, please attend my book launch!
Camille LeFevre
A former arts journalist, magazine editor, curator, and adjunct professor, Camille LeFevre now writes poetry and creative nonfiction from the unceded lands of the Hisatsinom, Yavapai, and Apache in Northern Arizona. Her essay, “Body Topography,” published in The Dodge, was selected for the 2026 Best of the Net Anthology. Her work has also appeared in Poets for Science, wildscape. literary, Feral: A Journal of Poetry and Art, Metphrastics, Fugue, Unleash Literary, Electric Lit, Brevity Blog, and other publications. She has written books on dance and architecture. In October, FLP publishes her first poetry collection, Sandstone and Kin, which she worked on during a previous Dorland residency.