In 2025, we expanded our efforts to reach more people with beautiful, accessible poetry by making the decision to publish Farzana Marie’s heartbreaking and inspiring debut collection, When Language Left Me.

When Language Left Me is available for purchase through your local bookstore (by request), from Amazon, or directly from the printer at the discounted price of just $10.95 (see the link below).

“Before a massive stroke silenced her in 2015, the poet and translator Farzana Marie spoke six languages. After a decade of arduous rehabilitation, she now speaks a seventh: the tongue of remarkable courage.”
-Paulann Petersen, Oregon Poet Laureate Emerita

“…a book rich in grief and laughter, poems from the tongue’s recovery in the aftermath of stroke. … Reading these pages, you will see each word pulled heroically from silence, thought uttered past paralysis, insight pried forth to sing.”
-Kim Stafford, author of As the Sky Begins to Change

“This fierce and moving collection chronicles the decade since [Farzana Marie’s stroke] and the sentence-by-sentence struggle to build from blank and misshapen thoughts.”
-Lauren Camp, New Mexico Poet Laureate Emerita

“For those unfamiliar with aphasia, [Farzana Marie’s poetry] gives a rare and powerful glimpse into what it is like to lose language.”
-Fabi Hirsch Kruse, PhD, CCC-SLP, Co-Founder: Friends of Aphasia

“These poems bring the poet and the reader together, on our shared plain of humanity, to each examine and explore our identity, our fragility, our power, and the possibilities to be found within ourselves.”
-PW Covington, New Mexico Beat Poet Laureate

Books from Abandoned Mine’s anthology series:

43 Poems for People Who Don’t Read Poetry and 25 Poems for People Who Don’t Read Poetry are collections full of heart and humor, with contributions from new poets as well as poet laureates.

We hope these books make their way into the hands of many people who presently do not read poetry (only because they don’t yet know they like it), and that 43 Poems and 25 Poems so delight and inspire people that they seek out and read poetry for the remainder of their lives!

Both books are available for purchase through your local bookstore (by request), from Amazon, or directly from the printer at the discounted price of just $9.95 each: