Summary (also available by PDF flier): Through lyric images, The Moon is Always Whole invites readers into the body’s rhythms of creation, love, and loss—affirming that even as we see only in part, "the moon is always whole" within and beyond chronic illness, ancestral trauma, silencing, betrayal.

"Julia Baker Swann’s evocative poems invite us to dance with the elements of earth and the universe, to celebrate our complicated layers and our burning core, and to enter with her into the illuminations of both intimacy and vastness, poems that offer 'this miraculous carried by bodies' that call us to 'hold fast to the circle within.' —Jean Janzen, Author, What the Body Knows 

"In this theopoetic adventure of body and soul, Julia Baker Swann believes a body knows and a poem knows much in a field of clover beyond belief." —Scott Holland, Slabaugh Professor of Theology & Culture at Bethany Theological Seminary

"This is a marvelous book of grace, praise, wonder, and joy. This is a rare talent in tune with the world." —Lee Herrick, Author, Scar and Flower (2019) and Gardening Secrets of the Dead (2012)

Market: Anyone interested in poetry that, as Baker puts it one poem, offers glimpses “of the Light infusing / every thing, every thing.”

Shelving: Poetry; Anabaptist-Mennonite literature. BISAC: Poetry; RTM: 640 Poetry

The Author: Julia Baker Swann has many places she calls home. The diversities of internal and external landscapes speak through her poetry and visual art. She completed undergraduate studies at Goshen College and has postgraduate studies in Somatic Internal Family Systems Therapy. She is completing an MA in Theopoetics and Writing at Bethany Theological Seminary and is poetry editor at Geez Magazine. This is her first poetry collection.

Quote: In “Your Steel Highways” Baker Swann offers a hymn not only to steel highways but also to so much that is space, culminating in “We travel together, gentle sway /carries us in our belovedness— / where soul and body arrive as one.” In another poem on the Great Salt Lake, Baker tells us that “I could not leave my offering of salt, / today I wake weeping alms,” she says, learning that “golden sap tears /rise from a root.”

Publisher: Cascadia Publishing House LLC
Imprint: DreamSeeker Books
Copublisher: None
Publication date: December 2020
Approximate Pages: 138
Tentative Format: 5.5 x 8.5" trade paper
Prices: $14.95 US/Can. ISBN 13: 978-1-68027-018-1  ISBN 13: 1-68027-018-4