Island poet Susan Lynch will read from her new book, “Into the All Empty,” at 5 p.m. Thursday, October 12, at Vashon Bookshop.

The volume of poetry, published by Chatwin Books, is Lynch’s first book and a culmination of a richly creative life.

At 16, Lynch dropped out of an elite private school in Providence, Rhode Island to hitchhike her way across the country.

As Lynch put it, “In 1971, a kid hitchhiking across the country sees many things and suffers many disappointments” — all of which would later come to inform the wisdom she shares in her poetry.

Flash forward to 1982. Susan had arrived in Los Angeles just two years prior and was now a signed singer/songwriter with famous record producer, Terry Melcher, known for his work with the Beach Boys and the Byrds. Her album was being produced by Epic Records and Bruce Johnston of the Beach Boys. In the not-so-distant future Joan Jett, the Queen of Rock n’ Roll herself, would cover one of Susan’s original songs.

However, the rock n’ roll side of Susan’s odyssey was only the beginning of a remarkable creative quest.

In her mid-fifties, Lynch decided to go to college, scoring in the top two percent in the nation for her GED, and applying to only one school, Reed College, where she earned her undergraduate degree in English. While at Reed, Susan was invited to spend a year at Oxford.

“My story is just a series of doors, opening and closing,” Lynch said. “It’s funny to think that in the span of my life, I went from high school dropout to studying creative writing at Oxford in my mid-fifties.”

And now, on the cusp of her 70th birthday, Susan Lynch has released her first book.

The forthcoming volume of poetry, “Into the All Empty,” was published on Oct. 3, by Chatwin Books.

The slim book shows the vast breadth of her journey to this moment in time.

For anyone who’s lost, failed, left, survived, and “blundered dumbstruck onto the thin ice of regret” — as Lynch writes — the poems of “Into the All Empty” serve as an encouragement to claim it all as an epiphany, and fly on.

As the University of California at Davis creative writing director, Katie Peterson said, “These wise, brave-hearted poems are regal. They are full of earned wisdom. But they are also full of human-scale wit and splendor… “We carry the cosmos in our hearts. And most of it is completely dark.”

Lynch’s poems have appeared in numerous journals and poetry compilations. From 2019-2021, she served as the Poet Laureate of Vashon.

Find out more about the book at chatwinbooks.com.

RADDLING

In the yawn of loom shed,

the strung weft-thread, I sing

rounds through the gray hours,

follow my loud choirs in

lays of sorrow, ravening

clowns, bloody-minded lore

marked by pricks of finger,

the need for shelter, for cloak.

Raddling melodies

entwine, as when wicker

makes a fence, a line

of bent sticks between trim

and moan, worn hollow

as bone. Next day, I disappear,

born in the mouths of birds,

robed in ringling overtones.

— Susan Lynch, “Into the All Empty”