BIO:

Valerie Duff has held fellowships from the VCCA and Writers’ Room of Boston. Her poems have appeared in AGNI, POETRY, Ploughshares, The Common, Great River Review, and elsewhere. Her second book, Aquamarine, was published by Lily Poetry Review Press in October 2023. Her previous volume, To the New World (Salmon Poetry, 2010), was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry Prize from Queens University, Belfast. She is a writer working in Alumni Relations & Resource Development (ARRD) at Harvard Kennedy School.

She studied poetry at Boston University and Trinity College, Dublin.  

AQUAMARINE (October 2023). Order here from Lily Poetry Review Press.

Praise for Aquamarine:

Aquamarine showcases the compelling arc — from the bare-bones to the blissful — of a maturing poetic vision. —Michael Londra, The Arts Fuse

Life can toss and turn us…and if we are unclear on the destination, we feel confident in this poet’s hands that we are witness to some profound leg of the journey.

—Robbie Gamble, Solstice: A Magazine of Diverse Voices

Aquamarine is a psalm to the complexities of the human heart. —Sherod Santos, author of Square Inch Hours (Norton)

A precarious balance between physical and emotional existence—at times, harmonious; other times, discordant—resonates at the core of Valerie Duff’s new book, Aquamarine. —Dzvinia Orlowsky, author of Bad Harvest (Carnegie Mellon)

Sorting through a Dream WOrld: An INterview with Valerie Duff (The Common)

"...I worked with that line for a bit, but yes, I wanted the tipping to happen."

from "Odysseus with a Siren in the Corner of His Eye"

....
Admit it: your grizzled eye

is pleased. You hoped for
salt flats, white beach, dead sleep,

the grotto where she’s not supposed to be.
You can’t have everything. The veins

in your arm swell, stoked
by wind, blue on the prow.

Do you know you’re angry?