Candice M. Kelsey’s new poetry collection, Another Place Altogether (Kelsay Books 2025), is a brilliant exploration of a woman’s relationship with her mother, with her children, and with a world both beautiful and intensely dangerous. The book also explores her relationship with the two places she lives between: Los Angeles and Augusta, Georgia.
The book is divided between the first section, called “Endings,” and the second, called “Beginnings.” In the first poem of the second section, the poet arrives in Georgia from Los Angeles. In Georgia, the California poet experiences discomfort with remnants of the Old South she sees in Georgia. At the end of the poem, “Because Your Husband’s Shirt is Ironed,” Kelsey well demonstrates this culture clash. At the beginning of the poem, a coach assumes her husband’s wife ironed his shirt. Later, she mentions to the other “homecoming moms” that the dads don’t have a group chat, the women ignore her. She says, “O how the South hates a wrinkle.” I love how she moves from misogyny to that ending.
The poems in this book are threaded with or even end on darkness. Some of the most stunning of these dark poems are about her treatment by her mother. In “Flesh and Bone,” she writes that her mother is “declaring me her own / flesh and blood. Nailing me to her.” Contrasted with her mother in this poem is her dead mother-in-law who offers supportive advice (emails from the beyond) and inspires her.
I found the introduction of this “found mother” very powerful and relate it to another aspect of this collection. Kelsey’s poetry here is inspired by other poets, especially women poets. “Menopause: A Cento from Female Poets Laureate” is the most obvious example of this. The homage is very welcome as a hopeful note that balances darker scenes, such as the friend’s brother who molests her when she’s 12-year-old and the friend’s father who abused his wife over her weight. In fact, the gender norm dictating a woman’s slimness is a theme that pops up several times. The poet’s mother was complicit in this emotional torture.
Most hopeful are the poems about the poet’s children. Love and pride shine through even the challenging times. And although sometimes she might want to act like her mother, she does not. In “Mothers & Daughters,” she would have good reason to send a nasty text (because she feels bad herself and her daughter is being selfish, a typical teen), but she does not, whereas her own mother would not have held back.
Near the end, even with the sound of her mother’s critical voice in her mind, she overcomes so that she can love herself: “Whispering Candice, I touch my ear / and hear self-love with these lips.” Read Another Place Altogether and you too will love Candice Kelsey and her powerful words.
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You can find Candice on Instagram at feed_me_poetry