Strange Gift: Poetry by Veronica Kornberg
Forthcoming April, 2026
ALT: Cover photo by Veronica Kornberg and cover art by Sophie Kornberg depicts two fish sculptures rising against a cloudy sky at sunrise or sunset, as though flying. Text reads: Strange Gift, poems, Veronica Kornberg.
Winner of the 2025 Wandering Aengus Book Award in Poetry!
With a keen eye for imagery, Veronica Kornberg brings the dearness of daily life to us from her perch on the edge of the Pacific, her newfound home: “We took it all on faith, as is. // Below us, the violent sea / broke its beautiful teeth on the rocks.” Kornberg invites us into the rich sensory detail of the place and “how a person can be // changed entirely by the scent of sage and coyote mint, / by the quick tongues of painted ladies that swarm the sea daisies…” Against this backdrop, we’re also led into family memories, “this conversation between the living and the long dead” and toward this conclusion: “It did not feel like loss, but a wheel turning.” This is a lush debut, a narrative collection full of gift after Strange Gift."
--Ellen Bass, author of Indigo
Wondrous, dug from the earth, I trust these poems to lead me "toward the beat to follow, the flutter/ of blood, the bone.”
--Danusha Laméris, author of Blade By Blade
Veronica Kornberg’s gorgeous, transcendent poetry collection Strange Gift is a grounding, bountiful reaping–a landscape & seascape of memory which “peel[s] the body’s waxy, rough skin / right down to the tender.” These are some of the most distinctive, memorable poems on nature & memory that I’ve ever read. They never rush or push us into grief or joy. Instead, they offer us a sensory feast, a meditation on the tide, the garden & who we have loved & lost. Strange Gift is an elegant testament to “the hidden / marrow of days leaching thin.” Alternating between vibrant & subtle images, these masterful poems remind me that being human means living in a shared world on borrowed time. And it is in that shared world that we must find ways to hold on, to let go & to bear witness to what remains.
--Joan Kwon Glass, author of Daughter of Three Gone Kingdoms
From the concrete edges of a New Jersey girlhood to the long-sought home on the Pacific Coast, the poems in Veronica Kornberg’s Strange Gift trace a journey through landscapes that are at once external and deeply internal, ultimately a search for notions of home: “I thought maybe there was a place for me in this world,” Kornberg writes in the titular poem, “a little side street off the parade route.” In these poems, nature is both sanctuary and mirror reflecting the complexities of loss and renewal, a reminder that even in the most fractured and damaged landscapes, beauty persists. Above all, Strange Gift is a love letter to a life well-lived—to the bitter and the sweet, to loved ones past and present, and to the evening primrose in its unabashedly “frank availability.” This is one stunning debut.
--Sarah Freligh, author of Sad Math and Other Emergencies
The world offers its gifts to us daily, strange, illuminating and sometimes comforting. In Veronica Kornberg’s Strange Gift, you will enter a world within a world and recognize these luminous and curious offerings "in the billowed meadow of the night, along with birdsong in the winter scrub,/wren-tit and fox sparrow." Kornberg has a detailed eye for the jewels and diamonds the natural world offers up in abundance but also for the discordant gestures of love revealed in one’s own family, the on-going thrum of memories and the wonder of time. These poems remind us that if we pay close attention we too can stand "listening with our bodies" to "the rivers braiding inside us."
--Tina Schumann, author of Praising the Paradox and Boneyard Heresies.
With a keen eye for imagery, Veronica Kornberg brings the dearness of daily life to us from her perch on the edge of the Pacific, her newfound home: “We took it all on faith, as is. // Below us, the violent sea / broke its beautiful teeth on the rocks.” Kornberg invites us into the rich sensory detail of the place and “how a person can be // changed entirely by the scent of sage and coyote mint, / by the quick tongues of painted ladies that swarm the sea daisies…” Against this backdrop, we’re also led into family memories, “this conversation between the living and the long dead” and toward this conclusion: “It did not feel like loss, but a wheel turning.” This is a lush debut, a narrative collection full of gift after Strange Gift."
--Ellen Bass, author of Indigo
Wondrous, dug from the earth, I trust these poems to lead me "toward the beat to follow, the flutter/ of blood, the bone.”
--Danusha Laméris, author of Blade By Blade
Veronica Kornberg’s gorgeous, transcendent poetry collection Strange Gift is a grounding, bountiful reaping–a landscape & seascape of memory which “peel[s] the body’s waxy, rough skin / right down to the tender.” These are some of the most distinctive, memorable poems on nature & memory that I’ve ever read. They never rush or push us into grief or joy. Instead, they offer us a sensory feast, a meditation on the tide, the garden & who we have loved & lost. Strange Gift is an elegant testament to “the hidden / marrow of days leaching thin.” Alternating between vibrant & subtle images, these masterful poems remind me that being human means living in a shared world on borrowed time. And it is in that shared world that we must find ways to hold on, to let go & to bear witness to what remains.
--Joan Kwon Glass, author of Daughter of Three Gone Kingdoms
From the concrete edges of a New Jersey girlhood to the long-sought home on the Pacific Coast, the poems in Veronica Kornberg’s Strange Gift trace a journey through landscapes that are at once external and deeply internal, ultimately a search for notions of home: “I thought maybe there was a place for me in this world,” Kornberg writes in the titular poem, “a little side street off the parade route.” In these poems, nature is both sanctuary and mirror reflecting the complexities of loss and renewal, a reminder that even in the most fractured and damaged landscapes, beauty persists. Above all, Strange Gift is a love letter to a life well-lived—to the bitter and the sweet, to loved ones past and present, and to the evening primrose in its unabashedly “frank availability.” This is one stunning debut.
--Sarah Freligh, author of Sad Math and Other Emergencies
The world offers its gifts to us daily, strange, illuminating and sometimes comforting. In Veronica Kornberg’s Strange Gift, you will enter a world within a world and recognize these luminous and curious offerings "in the billowed meadow of the night, along with birdsong in the winter scrub,/wren-tit and fox sparrow." Kornberg has a detailed eye for the jewels and diamonds the natural world offers up in abundance but also for the discordant gestures of love revealed in one’s own family, the on-going thrum of memories and the wonder of time. These poems remind us that if we pay close attention we too can stand "listening with our bodies" to "the rivers braiding inside us."
--Tina Schumann, author of Praising the Paradox and Boneyard Heresies.
Pre-Order Strange Gift
ALT: Photo of poet Veronica Kornberg standing in sunshine against a backdrop of rocks and boulders.
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Veronica Kornberg splits her time between Portola Valley and Pescadero, a small town on the Central Coast of California. Recipient of the Morton Marcus Poetry Prize, and the 2025 Wandering Aengus Book Award in Poetry, her work has appeared in numerous journals, including Alaska Quarterly Review, New Ohio Review, Poet Lore, Catamaran, Rattle, Indiana Review, Plume, Rhino Poetry, Calyx, and Beloit Poetry Journal. Veronica co-founded a long-running poetry book club on the Peninsula, and is a Peer Reviewer for Whale Road Review. At home in Pescadero, you can find her happily exploring the tidepools, or on her knees in the dirt in her large habitat garden of coastal scrub. Strange Gift is her debut poetry collection. veronicakornberg.com
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