Silver Bow Publishing, December 2025
Hawking the Surf is an invitation to wholeness, art in every breath. In wordsmithing wizardry from earth to sea, Hayes steers us through heavy storms, her call for compassion permeating as we battle mortality in the search for meaning. She evokes universal knowing, every leaf and wave realms of intergenerational connection, literary traditions woven like DNA, all of it alive. With symbolism seeping through photos like “Bridging the White Water” and close ups of roses and dragonflies, musicality hooks readers, then transports them beyond words to mood and time, to that space within, that paradoxical connection with eternity in moments of peaceful presence. Poems like “How Do You Spell Joy?” and “Walk the Labyrinth” invoke reverence, to open to the unique flavor of now, while others like “Memory of Wonder” are perceptibly restorative. “I see you in the apple trees next to the gabled shed/ climbing, always reaching higher…/ Know I will be there in the flowers—/dahlias, hydrangeas, dianthus, pansies,” Hayes writes of loved ones looking on, then passes the torch to readers, “Your hand now holds this pen—/your poem forms the song./ Sing now, I am not far on the wind.” For every connoisseur of literature and every emerging writer seeking the way—if you only buy one book of poetry, this should be it.
–Cynthia Sharp, WIN Vancouver Poet Laureate & Award-winning Author of Ordinary Light & Rainforest in Russet (Silver Bow Publishing)
Imagine a meeting between Robert Frost and David Attenborough, and they make poetry together. Hawking the Surf is it; a masterpiece that takes the reader on a grand journey to the Western shores on the wings of butterflies. As you travel through the latitudes, share in the memories and dreams of the poet, you will undoubtedly be carried on as this reader was. This is a collection that you will want to read again and again, something not so common with poetry anymore. It is full of emotions, passions, and realities that are most relatable to all of us. Although you may never have traveled to those realms, you are certain to experience them as if you had. The author gives us access to an entire natural world, and we want to hug it with all our might, love it, and preserve it, however much pain we may have to endure as we do so. This is a winner written by one but made for all.
–Fabrice Poussin, Professor, Shorter University, Rome, Geogia U.S.A. and author of: Through the Lens of Solitude; Forgive Me For Dreaming; In Absentia; Half Past Life; and The Temptation of Silence