Poetry and Artist Books
Title: Boreal Colloquy
Creating Homes for My Poems in Artist Books
The artist book is to the world of books, what poetry is to the world of language.
What is an artist book? Simply put, an artist book is a work of art that has book-like qualities (eg: pages, sequence, covers), but challenges the conventional meaning of “book” in its content, form, and function. In the book arts world, there are many kinds of structures that can be folded, cut, glued, and sewn from a wide variety of materials to create one-of-a-kind artist books. As a book artist, I love experimenting with materials and techniques as I create “homes” for my poems.
I have discovered that creating artist books that include my poems has brought meaning and delight to my life, both an artist and a poet. Along with traditional and nontraditional bookmaking materials, my artist books incorporate found objects that reflect my astonishment and connection to the natural world.
Poetry
My poems often germinate when I am in a wild place paying attention. Paying attention to weather and the sounds of wind and rain, to the susurration of water, the motions of birds and animals, the shape and color of growing things, the way light spills through branches, the way clouds rake through trees on a mountainside. I am drawn to the myriad ways the natural world beckons us.
My poems also bloom from my life as a teacher, sharing life with hundreds of children and their families, and as a traveler to other part of the globe on wilderness adventures or with friends discovering new cultures. All these experiences have inspired and shaped who I am and what I write. This stanza from Mary Oliver’s poem, Sometimes, resonates for me:
Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
INVITATION
Come sit with me.
Bring whatever you’re carrying,
small griefs, large ones.
Set them down on the forest floor.
If you’ve come in spring when birch
buds release their clasped leaves,
think about someone you’ve lost, how
they offered you this same exuberance.
In summer, the swish and rustle
of aspens will winnow around you.
Bluebells will blossom, remind
you how quickly things change.
If it’s autumn, tamaracks will sift
flaxen needles while squirrels
chirr from spruce branches
wondering how you’re getting ready.
Winter demands special attention.
Life tapers to a tiny flame kept safe in
the heartwood, tended in darkness.
You , too, must do this.
Come, enter the forest, accept
the invitation being offered.
There are many ways to heal.
Come sit with me.
BIRCHES
Birches know about longing.
From October to May they wait.
Wait.
Wait for winter to relinquish its grip.
Sheathed in their elegant skins,
limbs anticipate the change,
a tap on the shoulder, bright coins
of light pressed into their boughs.
By early May, tree wells open,
sleeves of snow fall slack,
relax into thawing ground.
Sap rises cell by cell until
buds burst and no matter
how long you’ve lived at this
latitude you are astonished by
the arrival of so much green.
Each leaf’s release leaps bright
into branches eight months bare.
Soon every tree rustles with
thrushes, warblers, and kinglets.
The patient months of longing
suddenly shimmer with light
and you hear a familiar story
told new for the first time.
TAMARACKS
In autumn they acquiesce, their bright yellow
needles cover the ground, abandoned confetti
strewn by failing light, falling temperatures.
Hammered by winter, they endure scant sunlight,
the gelid air clamping down hard, harder still
over muskeg muffled in snow and hoarfrost.
Spring runoff saturates the bog, soaks the
latticework of shallow roots as new needles
burst bright green along each knobbed twig.
Summer hefts its simmering weight into slender
branches, clusters of tufted needles embrace daylight,
such extravagant brightness in this northern latitude,
so much mystery arranging itself over and over while
we struggle to learn how to be this resilient, long to
know, that even in extremity, there are ways to hold on.