Publication Date: February 15, 2026
Paperback, 72 pages
ISBN: 978-1-966677-33-8
Vera Kewes Salter’s poems crisscross cities and years in this tender and commanding collection, Girl on the Underground. We ride with her as a young girl beneath London streets, and we travel with her to Pittsburgh where she falls in love. Salter moves effortlessly through lyrical narratives of generations past, to more recent glimpses of her bi-racial family, to caring for her husband through Lewys Body Dementia. As Salter’s poems explore these themes of race, love, loss, and family, we find ourselves sitting “close together // on the bottom of the stairs and remember,” with her, “the many homes where we once lived.”
—Alison Palmer, author of The Offing
More Praise for Vera Kewes Salter & Girl on the Underground
Girl on the Underground by Vera Kewes Salter spans two continents—a childhood and young adulthood in the United Kingdom and adulthood in the United States—and a multitude of emotions—joy, grief, anger, and bewilderment—sometimes in the same poem. In “Almost Being English in America,” Salter writes, “Anglophiles are horrified when they discover that I am married to a black man and have a mixed family. Once when I walked in the street with a colleague who was proud of his Welsh heritage, we ran into my mother-in-law. I introduced them. He never spoke to me again.” Salter brings her metaphysical probing and fierce imagistic attention to poems that mine a full life of activism, work, marriage, mothering, and caretaking in this unforgettable collection.
—Jennifer Franklin, author of A Fire in Her Brain
Take a ride with Vera Kewes Salter down into the connecting passages of her life in poems, from her girlhood in London, as a daughter of Jewish, atheist refugees, to her activism against the H-Bomb, attendance at a university under construction, and then a move to Pittsburgh, where she meets her future husband, Bonney, a black Marine veteran of Vietnam. She navigates the expectations and limits of her Britishness, bigotry towards her exoticism, and even her own inadvertent racism as a young mother brushing her daughter’s hair. There’s almost a whole life volleyed through tennis they learn to play together in 1971 “on the concrete wall at the traffic circle next to the police station” in separate games and years until the lights go out. Kewes Salter writes tenderly and indelibly about caring for Bonney through Lewy Body Dementia, and herself in widowhood. Many poems contain obvious or subverted lists—lost objects, things her husband tells her, years of cooking borscht, portraits of family made by artists in the family, harbingers of spring. Doors are opening for Girl on the Underground; don’t miss your “all-season ticket” to Salter’s vivid, endearing chronicle of family, social conscience, art, and love.
—Amy Holman, author of Captive & Wrens Fly Through This Opened Window
About the Author
Vera Kewes Salter was born and raised in London, England, in a family of Jewish refugees from Europe. In 1969 she moved to the United States and married into an African American family, had two children, and earned her doctorate in sociology. These varied perspectives are integral to her work. Her chapbook In Lewy's Body was published by Finishing Line Press in 2024. It recounts her life with her husband who was a Marine Corps veteran who served in Vietnam. She was his care partner while he experienced progressive Lewy Body Dementia.
Vera is a lifelong activist and worked professionally in healthcare administration. Her work has appeared in numerous journals.
Publication Date: February 15, 2026
Paperback, 72 pages
ISBN: 978-1-966677-33-8
Vera Kewes Salter’s poems crisscross cities and years in this tender and commanding collection, Girl on the Underground. We ride with her as a young girl beneath London streets, and we travel with her to Pittsburgh where she falls in love. Salter moves effortlessly through lyrical narratives of generations past, to more recent glimpses of her bi-racial family, to caring for her husband through Lewys Body Dementia. As Salter’s poems explore these themes of race, love, loss, and family, we find ourselves sitting “close together // on the bottom of the stairs and remember,” with her, “the many homes where we once lived.”
—Alison Palmer, author of The Offing
More Praise for Vera Kewes Salter & Girl on the Underground
Girl on the Underground by Vera Kewes Salter spans two continents—a childhood and young adulthood in the United Kingdom and adulthood in the United States—and a multitude of emotions—joy, grief, anger, and bewilderment—sometimes in the same poem. In “Almost Being English in America,” Salter writes, “Anglophiles are horrified when they discover that I am married to a black man and have a mixed family. Once when I walked in the street with a colleague who was proud of his Welsh heritage, we ran into my mother-in-law. I introduced them. He never spoke to me again.” Salter brings her metaphysical probing and fierce imagistic attention to poems that mine a full life of activism, work, marriage, mothering, and caretaking in this unforgettable collection.
—Jennifer Franklin, author of A Fire in Her Brain
Take a ride with Vera Kewes Salter down into the connecting passages of her life in poems, from her girlhood in London, as a daughter of Jewish, atheist refugees, to her activism against the H-Bomb, attendance at a university under construction, and then a move to Pittsburgh, where she meets her future husband, Bonney, a black Marine veteran of Vietnam. She navigates the expectations and limits of her Britishness, bigotry towards her exoticism, and even her own inadvertent racism as a young mother brushing her daughter’s hair. There’s almost a whole life volleyed through tennis they learn to play together in 1971 “on the concrete wall at the traffic circle next to the police station” in separate games and years until the lights go out. Kewes Salter writes tenderly and indelibly about caring for Bonney through Lewy Body Dementia, and herself in widowhood. Many poems contain obvious or subverted lists—lost objects, things her husband tells her, years of cooking borscht, portraits of family made by artists in the family, harbingers of spring. Doors are opening for Girl on the Underground; don’t miss your “all-season ticket” to Salter’s vivid, endearing chronicle of family, social conscience, art, and love.
—Amy Holman, author of Captive & Wrens Fly Through This Opened Window
About the Author
Vera Kewes Salter was born and raised in London, England, in a family of Jewish refugees from Europe. In 1969 she moved to the United States and married into an African American family, had two children, and earned her doctorate in sociology. These varied perspectives are integral to her work. Her chapbook In Lewy's Body was published by Finishing Line Press in 2024. It recounts her life with her husband who was a Marine Corps veteran who served in Vietnam. She was his care partner while he experienced progressive Lewy Body Dementia.
Vera is a lifelong activist and worked professionally in healthcare administration. Her work has appeared in numerous journals.
