Lisa Berg • Coming Back to the World

Coming Back to the World, published in 2005, is Lisa Berg’s first collection of poetry. It is also the Laurel Poetry Collective’s top-selling book.

In Coming Back to the World, Berg’s voice is clear and strong; her settings and themes are common, her language simple, but the power of her poems transcends simplicity. In many of her poems of childhood, identity, and love, passion is the undertow. She writes of fulfillment, unrequited
love, lost love, love through friendship, and more. And her images of love stay with us.

Looking Skyward

If I could,

I would choose

to be that

tree. Not pulled,

but reaching

in every

direction,

growing toward,

hungry for

what it will

inhabit well.

That it will

rightly complete

how we see,

even

the sky.

From Coming Back to the World, by Lisa Berg

About Lisa

Lisa is the owner of the Blue Moon Coffee Shop in Minneapolis, which serves as a creative home for many area writers — including herself. Even as she pours coffee, or takes inventory, Lisa’s is busy collecting images for future poems.

Lisa on Writing Poetry

I like to write. When I write, I feel whole and absolutely and entirely present.

From The Double Meaning of Yield: Laurel Poets on Writing Poetry