Novelist and human-rights advocate Bill Ransom–and the founder of the Port Townsend Writers' Conference, in 1973–has released a new collection of poems, "The Woman and the War Baby," published by Blue Begonia Press.

Divided into six sections, or "orientations," the book is a journey in the tradition of Li Po, Tu Fu, Kenneth Rexroth, and Gary Snyder. In this collection, the opening poems soaked in the rain, rosehips, and cafes of the Pacific Northwest; and the fourth and fifth sections of the book move their focus to the Central America of the nineteen-eighties and the human cost of the U.S.-fueled wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador. In the sixth section, the poems begin to carry titles of "Back Home," "After the War," and "Eavesdropping on America," before culminating back in the Pacific Northwest.

About this collection, poet Michael Daley writes: "Owls know but do not tell. Thistles and wild rose keep words to themselves though they pray for miracles. Bill Ransom gives us the magical dream of an image afloat in the fact of space, while time itself is a steady line: A loose log rolls in the surf outside. If writer and reader can be said to create a new thing through a work of art, 'The Woman and The War Baby' veers to such transformations."