Where do you find inspiration?
Start with a bird. It might be a red throated diver. Call it a rain goose. Call it a loon. Call it star diver, Sterntaucher. Call…
Things you can’t tell just by looking at her
I saw a movie once called Things You Can Tell Just By Looking At Her: five short stories about women’s interior struggles with loneliness, grief, dissatisfaction.…
Poetry in reverse: Part 2 of 3
Reversing someone else’s poem is a way of being in conversation with another poet. Elee Kraljii Gardiner, the gifted Vancouver writer, writing teacher, and publisher who…
Poetry in reverse: Part 1 of 3
Elee Kraljii Gardiner is the author of serpentine loop (Anvil Press, 2016), an innovative, beautiful book of poems that has been shortlisted for the League of…
Poetry in reverse: Part 3 of 3
“For 100 days, Juliane Okot Bitek recorded the lingering nightmare of the Rwandan genocide in a poem—each poem recalling the senseless loss of life and of…
Poetry and prose
If you’re not a regular reader of Shawna Lemay’s Transactions With Beauty, you’re missing out on one of the most exquisitely thought-provoking conversations on the web—about…
It’s April: Wake up, fool!
Joyous are the days when I find a new poet (new to me) who makes me fall in love with language—and with life—all over again. It’s…
Rumi showed up in last Tuesday’s mail, twice
Out here in the bush we pick up our mail once a week, on Tuesdays, when LW drives into town to deliver eggs. It’s always an…
Resolution: To write you no more
I mentioned the other day that I don’t make New Year’s resolutions anymore, but if I did, Maria Popova offers a list of suggested resolutions that…
Quilted sunflowers
This is the semi-Amish quilt I bought at the annual Amish auction in Rexford, Montana, in 1995. True Amish quilts don’t use printed fabrics, only solids,…