Where I Dry The Flowers

Where I Dry The FlowersSchminkey, 2024 Signed copies available while supplies last! If Ollie Schminkeys Dead Dad Jokes asks the question, "What was it like to watch my father die?", Where I Dry the Flowers asks "How did watching someone die teach me how to live?" This unrestrained and raw sophomore collection explores themes of grief, healing, and forgiveness while refusing to sacrifice the hard truths that come with addiction, care taking, and the death of a loved one.

Schminkey, 2024

Signed copies available while supplies last!

If Ollie Schminkey’s Dead Dad Jokes asks the question, "What was it like to watch my father die?", Where I Dry the Flowers asks "How did watching someone die teach me how to live?"

This unrestrained and raw sophomore collection explores themes of grief, healing, and forgiveness while refusing to sacrifice the hard truths that come with addiction, care taking, and the death of a loved one. Ollie opens their heart to readers and tells them that these emotions are okay, no matter how conflicting and confusing they may be.

Praise for Ollie Schminkey

“This is where we tell the truth.” An entire forest of grief and hope and loss and love springs to life in this book: bursting with birdsong, paths marked and unmarked, walked by the living, holding the dead. A stunning reminder of what poetry can do.

– Kyle "Guante" Tran Myhre, author of Not a Lot of Reasons to Sing, But Enough

In the aftermath of their father’s death, Ollie Schminkey has written a stunning meditation on what it means to grieve the loss of a complex person. The poems inside this book are courageous enough to tell the whole truth. They neither sanctify a man because he has died, nor vilify a man because he caused pain. They grapple with what it is to love a person who is both “the drink and the fist” but also “guilty and blameless.” With their insistence on not painting a singular portrait, Ollie Schminkey offers humanity not only to their father, but to all of us. These poems will help you love the people in your life better. Ollie is the kind of writer the world needs right now.

– Andrea Gibson, author of You Better Be Lightning