Troublemaker

Laura Van Vorst's debut poetry collection celebrates the troublemaker within each of us, giving voice to grief, anger, awkwardness, anxiety, and crises of faith. It's a coming-of-middle-age that will be familiar to anyone who has shaken off old beliefs they've carried since childhood and ignited new ones, "choosing what to keep and what to leave; dying to get lost and found again."

Troublemaker explores the sacred relationships we share with each other, with the divine, and with ourselves, and how these relationships create and save us more than our certainty ever did.

"Troublemaker is a collection that keeps you on your toes. Challenging the idea of being a 'good girl, ' Laura Van Vorst's poems encourage us to be braver, bigger and more self-aware. This is a book that is full of grief, hope, love, friendship and joy, and most of all makes me want to skip into the light holding the label of 'too much' like a messy bouquet ready to be thrown out with power and with pride. I hold these poems like a secret note of self-assurance... This carefully crafted collection of poems is a battle cry, a spring in your step, and a gut punch that stings your teeth but leaves you giddy with the sugar rush of knowing yourself. I love these poems."

"Laura's poems haven't been written; they've been earned. Like the 'stretch marks' she writes of, these pieces bear witness to the growth that emerges through belief and doubt, grief and longing, asking and seeking, waiting and wandering. I felt the aching shadow of her father's passing, the primal force of labour and birth, the depth of a partner's love spanning big changes, and the liberating taste of more expansive beliefs taking root where old ones have passed away. It's a privilege to sit with these intimate and evocative portraits of a life moving through shifting seasons, like a garden wilting and blooming and coming alive, again and again."

"Laura Van Vorst's Troublemaker is a rich, lyrical journey that carries the reader through faith, love, grief, womanhood, and the natural world with stunning precision and heart. Her bold, inquisitive voice leaves no aspect of the human experience untouched. Vulnerable, elegant, and inventive in form, this collection is a radiant and powerful treasure."

"Troublemaker is a luminous and gut-honest exploration of what it means to question, grieve, love, and grow in the wild terrain of being human. With equal parts fire and tenderness, Laura Van Vorst traces the shifting seasons of a life, moving from the upheaval of rethinking long-held beliefs to the cold ache of loss, and into the warm, unruly bloom of love, friendship, and self-acceptance... Bold, intimate, and profoundly human, Troublemaker is a collection that doesn't just speak, it resonates long after the final page is turned."