Category Archives: Poetry

The Art of Poetic Midrash – Guest Poetry Blog #18 – Introducing the Latest Contributor, Canadian Poet, Barbara Pelman – Part One of Two

ISAAC —after Czeslaw Milosz’s poem Should Should Not A father should not lay his son upon an altar, should not listen to all he is told. He should not wander […]

The Drunkeness of Things Being Various – Guest Poetry Blog Series # 17 – Part Two of Two – Canadian Poet Catherine Graham Features Northen Irish Poet Louis MacNeice (1907-1963)

CATHERINE GRAHAM FEATURES LOUIS MACNEICE Snow The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was Spawning snow and pink roses against it Soundlessly collateral and incompatible: World is suddener […]

Grief Is Like Waiting for Fifty Giant Black Kettles to Boil – Guest Poetry Blog #17 – Introducing the Latest Contributor, Canadian Writer, Catherine Graham – Part One of Two

Back to the Quarry This surface for long-legged spiders once absolved teen skin. Plunge into the limestone museum. Mingle with rusty machinery sunken by a triggered spring. Let sunfish nibble […]

Words Emerge from Silence, the Silence Remains – Two More Poems by American Literary Treasure Wendell Berry

from Sabbath Poems 2007, V Those who use the world assuming their knowledge is sufficient destroy the world. The forest is mangled for the sale of a few sticks, or […]

A Wonderful Contrariness! – Guest Poetry Blog Series # 16 – Part Two of Two – Canadian Poet Kate Cayley Reflects on Poems by Wendell Berry and Philip Larkin

 KATE CAYLEY FEATURES WENDELL BERRY AND PHILIP LARKIN The Contrariness of the Mad Farmer I am done with apologies. If contrariness is my inheritance and destiny, so be it. If […]

Repetition as a Form of Attention – Guest Poetry Blog # 16 – Part One of Two – Introducing the Latest Contributor, Canadian Poet Kate Cayley

  Attention And if repetition could itself be a form of attention, folding along the crease until the crease finds itself hollowing out the groove, as in marriage, studying the […]

Griffin Prize Shortlist – Winner Announced Tonight, June 7th 2023 – A Look Back on My Blog Posts on some of the Nominated Books and Authors

I left this somewhat late! A quick look at blog posts I have written on four of the five shortlisted nominees for the Griffin Poetry Prize – Susan Musgrave, Ocean […]

Version 2 – Moving to Delilah – Guest Poetry Blog Series – Contributor # 15 – Canadian Poet Catherine Owen – Part One of Two

Sunflower, August The mammoth is its own planet. Each day, for months, it grows inches, thickens, its pedicel like obese bamboo, leaves plattering out, shading tomatoes and peas, quashing the […]

We Can Always Praise – Three Poems – A Meditation on Horseradish and Radishes – Lysheha, Harrison, Issa

Song 352 When you need to warm yourself, When you are hungry to share a word, When you crave a bread crumb, Don’t go to the tall trees — You’ll […]

Guest Poetry Blog Series #15 – Canadian Poet Catherine Owen Features American Poet Victoria Chang – Part Two of Two

Tears – died on August 3, 2016. Once we stopped at a Vons to pick up flowers and pinwheels on our way to the graveyard. It had been a year […]