Lee Woodman went to New London High School, and her family used to have a home on Ragged Mountain in Andover. Her father, Everett Woodman, was president of Colby-Sawyer College (then Colby Junior College) in the ‘60s and ‘70s.
Lee’s new book, Homescapes, traces her experience of growing up in India, moving to New Hampshire as a teenager, and reflecting as an adult on the rich yet multilayered feeling of being “a curious stranger both home and away.”
Home is a relative term, especially if you have grown up overseas. In Homescapes, Lee takes us from an Indian village to the edge of Tibet to a small town in New Hampshire. An audience with the Dalai Lama touches her spirit; questions from an American high school homeroom teacher challenge her wit. Lee never stops searching for what it means to be American, digs deep to understand her New England roots, and ponders intimate relationships, persistently asking, “Where – and what – is home?”
Advanced Praise for Homescapes
“Lee takes us to life in India and then to New Hampshire – with precise detail – so we are there, with no limit to the richness of story or the paradoxes of each place. The light brought to thought is language, and Lee charges hers with imagination and cultural signifiers. We’re not mere witnesses; we experience land as seen by this poet. This book is a distant mirror of two worlds, from the fragrance of foreign oils to ‘fresh white milk and bracing air’ brought beautifully vivid and close.” – Grace Cavalieri, Maryland Poet Laureate
“Read Lee Woodman’s Homescapes and get an intimate and passionate picture of what it means to grow up in two vastly different cultures – Indian and American. Having lived in both for many decades myself, I testify to the poet’s authenticity and vision of harmony that makes sense in today’s fractured world. A well-timed book!” – Natwar Gandhi, Chief Financial Officer, Washington, DC (2000-2013) and author of Still the Promised Land.
About the Author
Lee Woodman is the winner of the 2020 William Meredith Prize for Poetry. Her essays and poems have been published in Tiferet Journal, Zócalo Public Square, Grey Sparrow Press, The Ekphrastic Review, vox poetica, The New Guard Review, The Concord Monitor, The Hill Rag, and Naugatuck River Review.
A Pushcart nominee, she received an Individual Poetry Fellowship from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities FY 2019 and FY 2020. Her poetry collection, Mindscapes, was published by Poets’ Choice Publishing in February 2020.
An overseas childhood in France and India through age 14 sparked her love for language, art, theater and dance. She now lives in Washington DC. For more information, visit PoetLeeWoodman.com.