Michael Hettich has published 11 previous full-length collections of poetry, including his most recent book, To Start an Orchard: Poems. He also has published several chapbooks and handmade books that incorporate art and poetry. His work has appeared in journals such as Orion, Ploughshares, TriQuarterly, Witness, and The Sun. His new book, The Mica Mine: Poems (St. Andrew’s University Press), was lauded by poet Richard Blanco as celebrating “the unspoken dialogues of the natural world with linguistic dexterity and fierce transformative details.” Poet Campbell McGrath observed that Hettich’s poems “resemble half-remembered fables or lyrical dreams, animistic dramas played out in moonlit meadows, domestic interiors that shimmer like velvet jewelry boxes.”