Yearly Archives: 2017

Poems by Kaur, McCarthy and Maylor but First: Instagram Poets Seem to Rule – Will It Last?

from home it takes a broken person to come searching for meaning between my legs it takes a complete.whole. perfectly designed person to survive it… Rupi Kaur from the sun […]

Who Invented Meanness? A Poem and Review of Hyaena Season

Lost Inside Henry VIII’s Chapel Finally, I find you, my little one, on your knees, before an altar, penitent, pilgrim – your palms pressed close as pages. I drop down […]

Richard’s Sept. 24th Poetry Retreat – Duncan – Among Other Showings the Show Don’t Tell of Marie Howe!

Magdalene: The Woman Taken in Adultery Teacher, they said to Jesus, The Law of Moses says to stone her. What do you say? –John 8:5 You know how it is […]

Writing the Ache for God – Announcing a Poetry-As-Prayer Retreat in Calgary

‘I feel, like Beckett, that all poetry is prayer.’ Carol Ann Duffy from an interview with Jeanette Winterson,  www.jeanettewinterson.com. I have never separated the writing of poetry from prayer. I […]

Amber Tamblyn – Poet, Actor, Director – And Activist – So Done With Not Being Believed

I have been a fan of Amber Tamblyn since I read her 2012 poetry collection Bang Ditto. Her razor sharp eye combined with a wizardry for image and metaphor. But […]

Irreverent, Ribald, Irrepressible and Grief Struck and Stuck – The Wild Heart of Sherman Alexie

Hunger Games I crave grief for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Sweet grief, salted grief, I want so much To swallow you whole. I’m a damn sinner Who can only be […]

Not an Elegy – A Tribute to John Ashbery (1927-2017)

What Is Poetry The medieval town, with frieze Of boy scouts from Nagoya? The snow That came when we wanted it to snow? Beautiful images? Trying to avoid Ideas, as […]

The Bigness of Small Poems – #33 in a Series – The Ah! Ha! Genius of Jack Gilbert

The Cucumbers of Praxilla of Sicyon What is the best we leave behind? Certainly love and form and ourselves. Surely those. But it is the mornings that are hard to […]

The Bigness of Small Poems – #32 in a Series – The Indefatigable Lorna Crozier – Three Poems

WHAT THE SOUL WANTS  A horse made out of rain (it doesn’t need a blacksmith). A fret of dragonflies, the thin gloss of their wings. A yellow bicycle. Outside the […]

A Flood of Words – The Seriousness of Things Beyond our Understanding – A Poem by Al Purdy

from ON THE FLOOD PLAIN People have told us we built too near the lake “The flood plain is dangerous they said and no doubt they know more about it […]