LARKSPUR QUEEN, poetry by Megan Leonard

$25.00

Publication Date: September 15, 2025

Paperback, 96 pages

ISBN: 978-1-966677-18-5

Megan Leonard’s sparkling poetry collection Larkspur Queen opens with the Castle Queen exclaiming, “[Y]ou don’t know what my cells have endured / in this life or in another / unless you sit and listen / to me tell it.” What follows are six, awe-making sections of lyrical narratives that transport the reader to lands just unfamiliar enough to set the world we know off-kilter and make it new. Leonard weaves personal and universal tales taking her inspiration from the Lais of Marie de France, a collection of 12th century narrative romantic poems. “This is the magic,” Leonard writes, and readers will eagerly embrace the women of these stories: the Castle Queen, The Queen of Small Things, the Forest Queen, The Princess and the Falcon, the Spider Queen, and the Larkspur Queen. “Calling them by their names makes them friends,” the poet might say, and the reader comes to know each subject intimately brought to life in verse. “I will never leave you, we will find a way. . .” says the Larkspur Queen to her ghost daughter; Leonard’s writing holds this promise.

Praise for Megan Leonard & Larkspur Queen

Megan Leonard’s collection Larkspur Queen is a sparkling and haunting gift. This book—comprised of poems that are all delightful surprises—leaves us guessing around every corner. She pulls you in quickly with the second-person point of view in the very first line—as if someone has grabbed your arm and pulled you aside to tell you something critical and time-sensitive. From the start, you will be questioning this narrator and wondering about their past. Leonard writes, “I, for my part, / will tell the truth this time” —an intriguing invitation to wonder. There is a rhythm to these poems that keeps me reading—the words luring my eyes along—stopping to re-read but never miss a line because each line is a gem of storytelling. You may find that it’s impossible to read a line like “ when the first light of dawn, / just purple yawn across the mountain ridge” and not keep going. Likewise, Leonard’s description of a castle will put you right there: “of crystal and moonstone, / and ice, / and its rooms glowed with / the cold morning light: / the thinnest blue, the thinnest pink.” In one poem titled “Anyone Who Thinks Thunderstorms Are Romantic Has Never Lived In An Attic Apartment On Top Of A Hill In An Otherwise Flat City,” the piece is constructed of squares of text with a white space in each square- like the windows of a house. “You may be wondering why I am telling you this story,” writes Leonard. Lines like this remind us that she is speaking directly to us. This collection is like a fairy tale or a fable with characters you’ve never seen and yet they remind you of some part of yourself or some person you once knew. I dare you to start reading Larkspur Queen and try to put it down.

—Sarah Alcott Anderson, author of We Hold On To What We Can

The spine of Megan Leonard’s Larkspur Queen is a series of contemporary expansions on the medieval Lais of Marie de France. Rather than focusing on courtly love, as did their 12th century counterparts, the women in these maximalist, lilting poems are concerned with girlhood, motherhood, autonomy, and the body. In the face of the pandemic, chronic illness, persistent pain, and medical gaslighting, Leonard’s queens don’t practice gratitude or experience epiphanies. “It is easier to remember in the gray crepuscular light,” Leonard writes, “that her body is not the enemy.” Grounded in the specificities of the natural world, yet unafraid to reference modern absurdities like Paint and Sip parties, spanning terrain from the horizon line to the preschool pick up line, Leonard creates a chimeric collection, both narrative and poetic. How I gasped when a formative incident from early in the book—a pot of hot water accidentally spilled on a child’s face—reappeared, refracted, in another poem near the end. I inhaled the deeply engaging, linguistically stunning Larkspur Queen in one sitting, then went back, poem by poem, to savor it again.

—Nicole Haroutunian, author of Choose This Now

Megan Leonard declares herself thankful to Marie de France, who “could not have imagined how her poetry would inspire and comfort and delight another woman, another writer, some 850 years after she created it,” but now Leonard has taken her turn to inspire and comfort and delight, and her readers will be thankful to her. In her inspired and inspiring Larkspur Queen, Megan Leonard herself does what she shows her Enyette, Queen of the Forest, doing: “Like mushroom spores, she flies on the wind, / scatters herself into countless specks across / a forest sunbeam.”

—H. L. Hix, author of Moral Tales

Megan Leonard’s second poetry collection, Larkspur Queen, centers six fabular queens in narrative poems, guided by shorter, meditative ones. Each poem contains the natural world and swaths of color that weave us into their (now spoken, rather than unspoken) inner lives. She asks in one poem, “what do we need but poetry,” as an answered statement. Throughout, solitude is something sought, a kind of protection from men and others’ needs, providing a vividness for the women in the poems. The reader, one of the cast of queens without kings, is ultimately brought to herself in this beautifully crafted collection.

—Chloe Yelena Miller, author of Perforated & Viable

About the Author

Megan Leonard (she/they) is the author of Larkspur Queen (Broadstone Books) and book of lullabies (Milk & Cake Press), as well as the chapbooks Dear ______ (Milk & Cake Press), and where the body ends (Platypus Press). Meg’s work has appeared in Electric Literature, The Bellevue Literary Review, The Fourth River, SWWIM, and Tupelo Quarterly, and she is the recipient of the Prospero Prize in Poetry and the Puerto del Sol Prize; her work has been nominated for Best of the Net. Meg lives in coastal New Hampshire, where she works as a writing mentor both privately and for the University of New Hampshire. Though primarily a poet, Meg also enjoys visual art and prose, and themes in Meg’s work often include disability and chronic illness, mental illness, madness, motherhood, and dark little fairy tales. Meg lives with her spouse and children, as well as two cats, a tortoise, and a bearded dragon.

Publication Date: September 15, 2025

Paperback, 96 pages

ISBN: 978-1-966677-18-5

Megan Leonard’s sparkling poetry collection Larkspur Queen opens with the Castle Queen exclaiming, “[Y]ou don’t know what my cells have endured / in this life or in another / unless you sit and listen / to me tell it.” What follows are six, awe-making sections of lyrical narratives that transport the reader to lands just unfamiliar enough to set the world we know off-kilter and make it new. Leonard weaves personal and universal tales taking her inspiration from the Lais of Marie de France, a collection of 12th century narrative romantic poems. “This is the magic,” Leonard writes, and readers will eagerly embrace the women of these stories: the Castle Queen, The Queen of Small Things, the Forest Queen, The Princess and the Falcon, the Spider Queen, and the Larkspur Queen. “Calling them by their names makes them friends,” the poet might say, and the reader comes to know each subject intimately brought to life in verse. “I will never leave you, we will find a way. . .” says the Larkspur Queen to her ghost daughter; Leonard’s writing holds this promise.

Praise for Megan Leonard & Larkspur Queen

Megan Leonard’s collection Larkspur Queen is a sparkling and haunting gift. This book—comprised of poems that are all delightful surprises—leaves us guessing around every corner. She pulls you in quickly with the second-person point of view in the very first line—as if someone has grabbed your arm and pulled you aside to tell you something critical and time-sensitive. From the start, you will be questioning this narrator and wondering about their past. Leonard writes, “I, for my part, / will tell the truth this time” —an intriguing invitation to wonder. There is a rhythm to these poems that keeps me reading—the words luring my eyes along—stopping to re-read but never miss a line because each line is a gem of storytelling. You may find that it’s impossible to read a line like “ when the first light of dawn, / just purple yawn across the mountain ridge” and not keep going. Likewise, Leonard’s description of a castle will put you right there: “of crystal and moonstone, / and ice, / and its rooms glowed with / the cold morning light: / the thinnest blue, the thinnest pink.” In one poem titled “Anyone Who Thinks Thunderstorms Are Romantic Has Never Lived In An Attic Apartment On Top Of A Hill In An Otherwise Flat City,” the piece is constructed of squares of text with a white space in each square- like the windows of a house. “You may be wondering why I am telling you this story,” writes Leonard. Lines like this remind us that she is speaking directly to us. This collection is like a fairy tale or a fable with characters you’ve never seen and yet they remind you of some part of yourself or some person you once knew. I dare you to start reading Larkspur Queen and try to put it down.

—Sarah Alcott Anderson, author of We Hold On To What We Can

The spine of Megan Leonard’s Larkspur Queen is a series of contemporary expansions on the medieval Lais of Marie de France. Rather than focusing on courtly love, as did their 12th century counterparts, the women in these maximalist, lilting poems are concerned with girlhood, motherhood, autonomy, and the body. In the face of the pandemic, chronic illness, persistent pain, and medical gaslighting, Leonard’s queens don’t practice gratitude or experience epiphanies. “It is easier to remember in the gray crepuscular light,” Leonard writes, “that her body is not the enemy.” Grounded in the specificities of the natural world, yet unafraid to reference modern absurdities like Paint and Sip parties, spanning terrain from the horizon line to the preschool pick up line, Leonard creates a chimeric collection, both narrative and poetic. How I gasped when a formative incident from early in the book—a pot of hot water accidentally spilled on a child’s face—reappeared, refracted, in another poem near the end. I inhaled the deeply engaging, linguistically stunning Larkspur Queen in one sitting, then went back, poem by poem, to savor it again.

—Nicole Haroutunian, author of Choose This Now

Megan Leonard declares herself thankful to Marie de France, who “could not have imagined how her poetry would inspire and comfort and delight another woman, another writer, some 850 years after she created it,” but now Leonard has taken her turn to inspire and comfort and delight, and her readers will be thankful to her. In her inspired and inspiring Larkspur Queen, Megan Leonard herself does what she shows her Enyette, Queen of the Forest, doing: “Like mushroom spores, she flies on the wind, / scatters herself into countless specks across / a forest sunbeam.”

—H. L. Hix, author of Moral Tales

Megan Leonard’s second poetry collection, Larkspur Queen, centers six fabular queens in narrative poems, guided by shorter, meditative ones. Each poem contains the natural world and swaths of color that weave us into their (now spoken, rather than unspoken) inner lives. She asks in one poem, “what do we need but poetry,” as an answered statement. Throughout, solitude is something sought, a kind of protection from men and others’ needs, providing a vividness for the women in the poems. The reader, one of the cast of queens without kings, is ultimately brought to herself in this beautifully crafted collection.

—Chloe Yelena Miller, author of Perforated & Viable

About the Author

Megan Leonard (she/they) is the author of Larkspur Queen (Broadstone Books) and book of lullabies (Milk & Cake Press), as well as the chapbooks Dear ______ (Milk & Cake Press), and where the body ends (Platypus Press). Meg’s work has appeared in Electric Literature, The Bellevue Literary Review, The Fourth River, SWWIM, and Tupelo Quarterly, and she is the recipient of the Prospero Prize in Poetry and the Puerto del Sol Prize; her work has been nominated for Best of the Net. Meg lives in coastal New Hampshire, where she works as a writing mentor both privately and for the University of New Hampshire. Though primarily a poet, Meg also enjoys visual art and prose, and themes in Meg’s work often include disability and chronic illness, mental illness, madness, motherhood, and dark little fairy tales. Meg lives with her spouse and children, as well as two cats, a tortoise, and a bearded dragon.