A Daughter’s Work is Heartless by Nature, Caledonia Kearns’ first collection of poems, just published at the age of 49, is a sort of a hybrid between poetry and memoir. It’s an attempt to meet Muriel Rukeyser’s challenge, “What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?/The world would split open.”

Caledonia’s poems tell the story of an ordinary woman raising a daughter as a second-generation single mother, as she recreates herself after marriage, negotiates lovers lost and found, and navigates the quotidian.

Her poems have appeared in Drunken Boat, Painted Bride Quarterly and Natural Bridge, among others; and she has contributed essays and articles to publications including The Awl, The Boston Globe, and The Hairpin. She received a BA in Women’s Studies from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and an MFA from Hunter College. She has edited two anthologies of Irish American women’s writing, Cabbage and Bones and Motherland.

Caledonia lives in Brooklyn now. Born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, she grew up in Dorchester, Massachusetts. Her brother-in-law, the short story writer Jason Friedman, is a Glen Park resident.