So let us pick up the stones over which we stumble, friends, and build altars. Let us listen to the sound of breath in our bodies. let us listen to the sounds of our own voices, of our own names, of our own fears. Let us name the harsh light and soft darkness that surround […]
Yearly Archives: 2020
Turn Stones into Altars and Everything Is Going to Be All Right – The Wisdom of Irish Poets, Pádraig Ó Tuama and Derek Mahon
December 31, 2020 – 8:26 pm
We Must Write Love Poems in a Burning World – The Inspiring Poetry and Prose of American Poet Katie Farris
December 8, 2020 – 7:15 pm
Why Write Love Poetry in a Burning World To train myself to find, in the midst of hell what isn’t hell. The body, bald, cancerous, but still beautiful enough to imagine living the body washing the body replacing a loose front porch step the body chewing what it takes to keep a body going— […]
Finding the Poetry in the Pain – A Pandemic Anthology from Tupelo Press, Launched On-Line Dec. 6th, 2020
December 6, 2020 – 5:03 pm
Dear Tomorrow, I could do it again, watch the heron carry my grandmother’s verses to its despair garden. I could be a citizen of evergreens and tend to a homeland of weeds in the forest with something resembling love. I can accept the patience white strawberries require. I can learn prayers in the spring kingdom, […]
Shout, Shout Out from Your Tiny, Tiny Boat! An online Poetry-as-Prayer Retreat – Nov. 5, 6, and 7th, 2020 – Sponsored by Hillhurst United Church, Calgary
October 29, 2020 – 10:43 pm
This year’s title for the Hillhurst poetry-as-prayer retreat comes from the Fisherman’s Prayer as quoted by American poet Dorianne Laux, a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize: Dear Lord, be good to me, the sea is so wide and my boat is so small. Please consider this invitation to shout out in your own […]
Songs of Dust – Three Poems – Two by Lorna Crozier, Recent Winner of the City of Victoria Butler Book Prize and One by Danusha Lameris
October 8, 2020 – 7:32 pm
Sand From the Gobi Desert Sand from the Gobi Desert blows across Saskatchewan, becomes the irritation in an eye. So say the scientists who separate the smallest pollen from its wings of grit, identify the origin and name. You have to wonder where the dust from these fields ends up: Zimbabwe, Fiji, on the row […]
In A World Full of Falling, Full of Grief, also Solace – The Poetry of Danusha Laméris
October 4, 2020 – 6:44 pm
CHERRIES The woman standing in the Whole Foods aisle over the pyramid of fruit, neatly arranged under glossy lights, watched me drop a handful into a paper bag, said how do you do it? I always have to check each one. I looked down at the dark red fruit, each cherry good in its own, […]
No, Everything Is Not All Right! Irish Poet Derek Mahon (1941-2020) Dead at Seventy-Eight
October 2, 2020 – 2:08 pm
Heraclitus on Rivers Nobody steps into the same river twice. The same river is never the same Because that is the nature of water. Similarly your changing metabolism Means that you are no longer you. The cells die, and the precise Configuration of the heavenly bodies When she told you she loved you Will not […]
“Always and Only is a Poem About Love” – The Searing Poems of a Hugely Impactful and Globally Recognized Poet and Novelist – Toshani Doshi
September 1, 2020 – 10:25 pm
from Find the Poets Find the poets, my friend said. They will not speak of the things you and I speak about. They will not speak of economic integration or fiscal consolidation. They could not tell you anything about the burden of adjustment. But they could sit you down and tell you how poems are […]
With Thanks to Robin Dyke and the Victoria Fesitival of Authors, an Interview with Lorna Crozier on her upcoming book “Through the Garden, A Love Story (with Cats)”, a Memoir of Her Life with Poet and Novelist, Patrick Lane
August 4, 2020 – 5:53 pm
A Small Ambition To be no more than mist rising above the rushes, entering the white limbs of the trees. For just one hour to be a calmness a lifting up minus bones and muscles, minus memory and cognition and your own insistent longing to last. Lorna Crozier from THE HOUSE THE SPIRIT BUILDS, (Poems […]