Publications

The poems in Choosing a Stone, Hedderman’s first full-length poetry collection, masterfully explore the intersection of physical landscape and human consciousness. In sharply imagistic and muscular language, these visceral poems revel in the sensory delights that reinforce our shared humanity: praising hot black coffee, savoring a rustic Basque dinner, lazing in a hammock, or watching “the sky-map of cloud drift over the trees.” He is archeologist and alchemist, quarrying an historical mythos to shape his powerful, deeply-realized vision.

The radiant poems in The Discovery of Heaven chapbook are inflected with a lean yet intimate voice that reinforces the possibility of authentic poetic connection between poet, reader, and every earthly wonder. In language both vigorous and supple, these poems explore a common terrain shared by both human and wild forces, as in “Dove,” where the poet exhorts the reader:

Toward dusk,
set it near
an open window.

It will take flight
scanning fens
and flooded crossroads—

all the landmarks
of sleep.