These are beautifully wrought poems. I admire the way Martin creates out of our shared tradition a lyrically honest voice, one that enables him to illuminate the history and  human conflict of a place by paying close attention to  its physical glories and losses. In the voice of this poet, the narrow vision that has so often defined rural Southern culture opens up into what can only be called a poetic vision, and in doing so, the poems themselves become part of a sacred ritual of remembrance and restoration.  /// Kathryn Stripling Byer, former Poet Laureate of North Carolina, author of Wildwood Flower

Christopher Martin’s Everything Turns Away is one of the most beautiful chapbooks I’ve read. Martin’s sense of place—and how place both consumes and alienates, entrances and repels—suffuses this collection, allowing entrance not merely into a mind attuned to landscape and identity, but one that reaches down into the chthonic, essentializing all that has come before him and his family, as well as all that will come after. Martin investigates in these imagistic narratives how nature and identity are often at conflict, but when explored deeply and honestly, can create an abiding joy. /// William Wright, author of Grass Chapels and series editor of The Southern Poetry Anthology