Lucinda Trew
Poet & Author
New Release
What Falls to Ground
What Falls to Ground is a meditation on the marvel of gravity and the small broken things that lead us to grace. The poems in this collection commune lyrically with trees and earth, spoons and sky, moths and mortality. They reflect on the earthly path to the celestial, and the magic of physics, nature, loss and renewal.
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In poetry, the best way to love the things of this world is to see and describe them so well that the clarity and exactitude of vision creates transformation. It is this quality that draws me to the poetry
of Lucinda Trew whose collection What Falls to Ground presents us with stunning images and figures for contemplation. There is also an intricate music at work in this collection, I am knocked out by lines like “against wind and time, hearts and boughs that break/ from storm and thorn and toppled
crowns/ we ease one another/ to ground…” What perfect phrasing and cadence, what a wonderful
debut collection.
Stuart Dischell, author of Good Hope Road
Reviews & Praise
What Falls to Ground is a deep devotion of witnessing grace in the communion of scars or the fragility of a winter sun becoming a siren’s call. Lucinda Trew has woven a glorious collection of poetry that evokes a deep connection to the natural world, peace, conflict, warrior, and saint all connected in the everydayness of life. These poems capture wild joy, the currency of breath, and the reimagination that even weeds have wings. The poet’s intentionality and unflinching awareness skillfully utilizes the power and sensibility of poetics to remind us all to keep searching for the light, love, generosity, and tenderness.
Jaki Shelton Green, North Carolina Poet Laureate
The poems in this book are exquisite. Many of them begin with the everyday—the senses, observations, feelings—and evolve rich in color and music, and end in a state of grace about life. Reactions of readers will be — “Oh, my, yes!” The poems welcome the reader, a front door opening with a warm greeting to enter. But be ready to be amazed, dazzled, and so very, very grateful for these gifts. What Falls to Ground will lift you to a high state of gratitude. As the book ends, “... even weeds have wings.”
John Clark, author of Into the Swirl
“Trew has a gift for lush and sensual language, as shown in the very first poem, ‘there are riverbeds in the poplar’s bark’:
an entire geography etched
In furrowed hide, parched
channel, dry delta, stream turned
to earth and seed, sapling, shade
a druid tattooed with tributaries of sky
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It’s not just the language, of course, it’s the ability to peer deeply into the subject and see the ‘geography’ that whelms us.”
Richard Allen Taylor
The Main Street Rag
I love these poems for their compassion in the deep sense of that word, “suffering together.” In reading these lines I am able to pause and slant against the wind of my own doubt and daily struggles. Lucinda writes, “a poem is a bone / in the graveyard of remembering.” In memory I visit the bones of loss and pain but also the roots and seeds of what may again grow into joy. In the music of Lucinda’s words and phrases, the myth and earthy origins her poems suggest, the impermanence of all things resting the midst of rising sun and growing plant – in these I rediscover hope. Yes, we all fall to ground. Yes, we may ease each other as we fall.
Bill Griffin
Verse and Image
Selected Poetry
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Upcoming Events
February 16, 2026, 7th Street Market Open Mic Night
Charlotte, NC, 6:30 PM
May 31, 2026, North Carolina Poetry Society Reading, McIntyre's Books, 220 Market St., Fearrington Village, Pittsboro, NC, 2 PM
About Lucinda Trew
Lucinda Trew has been joyfully juggling words for as long as she can remember – from writing songs and lovestruck bad poetry as a child to grown-up jobs as a journalist, speechwriter, magazine editor, and adjunct professor.
She writes every day in a lovely blue room with dogs Huckleberry and Hazel by her side, and a wide-open view of trees, chirpy wrens, and spiders weaving window lace. She is the author of What Falls to Ground (Charlotte Lit Press, 2025), a meditation on the marvel of gravity and the small broken things that lead us to grace.
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She is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she earned dual degrees in journalism and English, and, as a member of the committee inviting and hosting the university’s speaker series, got to meet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and share a bottle of wine with Maya Angelou.
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Lucinda is grateful beyond words (oh, who are we kidding, there are always words!) to have her work included in many fine literary journals and anthologies, including Burningword Literary Journal, the North Carolina Literary Review, storySouth, Susurrus, Trace Fossils Review, Cagibi, and Remington Review.
She is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee, a Best of the Net nominee, and recipient of Boulevard Magazine’s 2023 Emerging Poet Award. She was named a North Carolina Poetry Society poet laureate award finalist in 2021 and 2022, a Randall Jarrell Poetry Competition finalist in 2021, and a Finishing Line Press New Women’s Voices Chapbook Series finalist in 2021. She lives, writes, and rambles among trees in the piney, red-clay Piedmont of North Carolina.
Get in Touch
Let's connect! I'd love to hear from you and am available for readings, workshops, and other events.
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