Borderline Fortune

Borderline Fortune is a poetry collection about inherited trauma, both within a family and across a wider community. It meditates on the intangible things families pass down, especially unresolved conflicts and traumas between generations, and sets them against the inheritance humans share as inhabitants of the planet.

As species go extinct and glaciers melt, Teresa K. Miller asks what people owe one another and what it means to echo the grief and fear of one's ancestors. She draws on her own family history, from her great-grandfather's years as a schoolteacher on an island in the Bering Strait to the early death of her father. She also draws on her work in regenerative horticulture.

Through these carefully crafted poems, Miller tries to wake from the intergenerational trance and to bear witness to the present moment with clarity and attention. She is a National Poetry Series winner.