Words Are Just Words

Words fail us. Words haunt us. Words become us.

In Words Are Just Words, Maylanie Bosgieter explores the quiet moments where language breaks down—where the story we tell about ourselves doesn't match who we're becoming, where memory holds truths we can't quite name, where a single word can carry the weight of an entire family history.

This semi-autobiographical collection weaves together poems about books and reading, family and roots, identity and change, memory and grief. Drawing from her work as a genealogist and lifelong reader, Bosgieter writes with unflinching honesty about what it means to search for yourself in the stories you carry—in family traditions, in the books that shaped you, in the words you choose (or fail to choose) to tell your truth.

From the metaphorical (a tree with missing branches, a winter that's disappearing, a dress that's never just a dress) to the deeply personal (a sister's graduation, a cat's forgiveness, a great-grandmother's legacy), these poems capture different versions of the same human struggle: how to hold on to who we were while becoming who we need to be.

Raw, direct, and deeply felt, this collection reminds us that the ordinary already contains enough wonder—we just have to look carefully enough to find it.

For readers of contemporary poetry, memoir, and anyone who has ever felt lost in translation between the person they were and the person they're becoming.