When Whales Went Back to the Water

"What gorgeous magic Baird excavates from human circumstance. Rich with celebration, grief, and a touch of science, When Whales Went Back to the Water navigates a labyrinth of survivals. 'You will / grow to be a wild thing,' Baird promises. And isn’t that the gift we each most desire?" Jeanann Verlee, author of PREY and others

“When Whales Went Back to the Water sings and pushes language with its uncanny imagery, unexpected word choices and combinations, and play with spacing and breath. With its linguistic lifts, Baird’s collection shows the power of free verse to convey lyric beauty.” Jenna Butler, author of Revery: A Year of Bees

"When Whales Went Back to the Water deftly moves between microscopic, geological, and intimate perspectives to show how we are 'animal[s] made of other animals'—and the grief and belonging that entails. Amidst housefires, environmental decline, domestic abuse, the word 'trauma' graffitied on a garbage bin, Baird conjures hard-earned awe." —Adèle Barclay, author of Renaissance Normcore

“In When Whales Went Back to the Water, Lisa Baird asks us to see the sacred in each moment. Again and again, this book calls us to the present with a clear voice and a sharp eye. Personal loss and collective emergency meet poignant truths of the natural world. ‘A relocated coyote will do whatever it takes to get back home,’ Baird tells us. She bares her own path home to herself: past nettle patches and open fields, through echoing violence and recovery, to the messy kitchen floor of new parenthood. We are in this together, these poems remind us. Even solitude is a collective condition.” Alessandra Naccarrato, author of Imminent Domains: Reckoning with the Anthropocene