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Author's Note
I began writing Skin and Coat in my late teens, when writing became the only place I could exist without asking permission. What started as a pile of poems slowly became a map of my inner life—a trail through loss, faith, tenderness, and the ways love both wounds and heals.
I found myself in what felt like an endless winter, so I embraced it. The imagery painted in the book is often bodily - skin, breath, bone - and recurring metaphors like windows, train stations, and winter deer trace the same truths from different angles. As for the title, it reflects a deer shedding its coat for survival, mirroring one of the key lessons I've learned over the years; that vulnerability gives way to resilience. Old selves sloughed off, and a new, stronger coat grows in their place. I think that's something we universally experience. The process isn’t clean, it stings, but the warmth and strength that follow make the cold all worth the while.
So, if you're deep within a winter of your own, I'd be honoured if you'd allow me to walk alongside you, and hopefully this book can provide you with warmth on your way.
- Luke William Hearte, Author of Skin and Coat
Poetry, Personified.
If this poetry were a person, she'd be a barefoot woman walking across a frozen lake at dawn, hair tangled, voice humming with long broken rhythms that are reflections of her past. She'd carry a satchel of letters she didn't have the courage to send, yet if you ever read them you'd of sworn they were your own. She sits here, waiting for you to find yourself in the words she speaks, the words you maybe never dared to.
To give a voice to the voiceless, poetry is memory, music, prophecy and prayer. Let yourself dig through the rubble of your own past and present, not to find treasure, but someone.