What prompted all this
About Spot of Poetry
I’m Berdene Owen, graphic designer and owner of Alivelihood Branding & Design. Poetry found me unexpectedly in 2019, and continues to delight, nourish and challenge me every day. One of the most joyful surprises has been the community of people I have met, starting with a local (Lunenburg, NS) poetry workshop presented by the wonderful Ben Gallagher. As the Covid pandemic unfolded, I discovered many vibrant online poetry communities and podcasts, all of which have helped to sustain and inspire me.
Spot of Poetry is about celebrating Joy in Words and the Community that gathers around them – locally (through in-person get-togethers) and globally (through a growing list of curated resources).
We are living though historic times of great polarization and uncertainty, let’s support each other with gentle but robust language that leaves room for questions, complexity and nuance.
“Poetry is really the only history we have of the human heart.”
― Billy Collins
Explore my
Bookshelf
During the early days of the COVID pandemic, as many news and entertainment personalities were broadcasting from the personal settings of their homes, I was struck by how many of these backdrops included bookshelves. Who was reading what? What intimate that revelations! Bookshelves as book-selves.
Here are some of the poetry books on my shelf.
Ledger
by Jane HirshfieldA pivotal book of personal, ecological, and political reckoning tuned toward issues of consequence to all who share this world’s current and future fate, from the internationally renowned poet. Hirshfield’s poems inscribe a registry, both personal and communal, of our present-day predicaments. They call us to deepened dimensions of thought, feeling, and action. They summon our responsibility to sustain one another and the earth while pondering, acutely and tenderly, the crises of refugees, justice, and climate.
The Octopus Museum
by Brenda ShaughnessyThis collection of bold and scathingly beautiful feminist poems imagines what comes after our current age of environmental destruction, racism, sexism, and divisive politics.
The Lost Words
by Robert MacfarlanceFrom Acorn to Weasel: a gorgeous, hand-illustrated, large-format spellbook celebrating the magic and wonder of the natural world. The Lost Words stands against the disappearance of wild childhood. It is a joyful celebration of the poetry of nature words and the living glory of our distinctive, British countryside. With acrostic spell-poems by peerless wordsmith Robert Macfarlane and hand-painted illustrations by Jackie Morris, this enchanting book captures the irreplaceable magic of language and nature for all ages.
Bright Dead Things
by Ada LimónBright Dead Things examines the chaos that is life, the dangerous thrill of living in a world you know you have to leave one day, and the search to find something that is ultimately “disorderly, and marvelous, and ours.”
Life on Mars
by Tracy K. SmithWith allusions to David Bowie and interplanetary travel, Life on Mars imagines a soundtrack for the universe to accompany the discoveries, failures, and oddities of human existence. Pulitzer Prize winner.
The Kingdom of Ordinary Time
by Marie HoweHurrying through errands, attending a dying mother, helping her own child down the playground slide, the speaker in these poems wonders: what is the difference between the self and the soul? The secular and the sacred? Where is the kingdom of heaven? And how does one live in Ordinary Time―during those apparently unmiraculous periods of everyday trouble and joy?
No Meeting Without Body
by Annick MacAskillThe poems in Annick MacAskill’s debut collection are confident and crisp. Departing from works of art and literature, historical figures, myth, and anecdote, her poems draw the reader into their subjects with unaffected frankness and intimacy, answering society’s most reductive forces with a resistance rooted in the dignity of human connection.
SPOT_OceanVuong_NightSky
by Ocean VuongOcean Vuong’s first full-length collection aims straight for the perennial “big”—and very human—subjects of romance, family, memory, grief, war, and melancholia. None of these he allows to overwhelm his spirit or his poems, which demonstrate, through breath and cadence and unrepentant enthrallment, that a gentle palm on a chest can calm the fiercest hungers.
The Poetry Pharmacy
by William SieghartThese poetic prescriptions and wise words of advice offer comfort, delight and inspiration for all; a space for reflection, and that precious realization – I’m not the only one who feels like this.
The Sun and Her Flowers
by Rupi KaurA vibrant and transcendent journey about growth and healing. Ancestry and honoring one’s roots. Expatriation and rising up to find a home within yourself.
Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude
by Ross GayCatalog of Unabashed Gratitude is a sustained meditation on that which goes away—loved ones, the seasons, the earth as we know it—that tries to find solace in the processes of the garden and the orchard.
American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin
by Terrance HayesTerrance Hayes explores the meanings of American, of assassin, and of love in 70 sonnets. Written during the first two hundred days of the Trump presidency, these poems are haunted by the country’s past and future eras and errors, its dreams and nightmares.
What the Living Do
by Marie HoweInformed by the death of a beloved brother, here are the stories of childhood, its thicket of sex and sorrow and joy, boys and girls growing into men and women, stories of a brother who in his dying could teach how to be most alive.
How to Love a Country
by Richard BlancoA timely and moving collection from the renowned inaugural poet on issues facing our country and people—immigration, gun violence, racism, LGBTQ issues, and more.roots.
I Have to Live
by Aisha Sasha JohnAisha Sasha John’s I have to live shows what poetry can become when stripped of prettiness and polite convention—when in survival mode. Spontaneous, its subjects unposed, its language unrehearsed, each poem has the effect of being taken with a polaroid camera. John writes poems that are resistant to overwrought aesthetics, poems that have popular appeal yet are uninhibited by audience, poems whose casual demeanour belie their fight against casualty.
Life on Mars
by Tracy K. SmithWith allusions to David Bowie and interplanetary travel, Life on Mars imagines a soundtrack for the universe to accompany the discoveries, failures, and oddities of human existence. Pulitzer Prize winner.
No Meeting Without Body
by Annick MacAskillThe poems in Annick MacAskill’s debut collection are confident and crisp. Departing from works of art and literature, historical figures, myth, and anecdote, her poems draw the reader into their subjects with unaffected frankness and intimacy, answering society’s most reductive forces with a resistance rooted in the dignity of human connection.
How to Love a Country
by Richard BlancoA timely and moving collection from the renowned inaugural poet on issues facing our country and people—immigration, gun violence, racism, LGBTQ issues, and more.roots.
American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin
by Terrance HayesTerrance Hayes explores the meanings of American, of assassin, and of love in 70 sonnets. Written during the first two hundred days of the Trump presidency, these poems are haunted by the country’s past and future eras and errors, its dreams and nightmares.
The Poetry Pharmacy
by William SieghartThese poetic prescriptions and wise words of advice offer comfort, delight and inspiration for all; a space for reflection, and that precious realization – I’m not the only one who feels like this.
Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude
by Ross GayCatalog of Unabashed Gratitude is a sustained meditation on that which goes away—loved ones, the seasons, the earth as we know it—that tries to find solace in the processes of the garden and the orchard.
The Sun and Her Flowers
by Rupi KaurA vibrant and transcendent journey about growth and healing. Ancestry and honoring one’s roots. Expatriation and rising up to find a home within yourself.
What the Living Do
by Marie HoweInformed by the death of a beloved brother, here are the stories of childhood, its thicket of sex and sorrow and joy, boys and girls growing into men and women, stories of a brother who in his dying could teach how to be most alive.
Ledger
by Jane HirshfieldA pivotal book of personal, ecological, and political reckoning tuned toward issues of consequence to all who share this world’s current and future fate, from the internationally renowned poet. Hirshfield’s poems inscribe a registry, both personal and communal, of our present-day predicaments. They call us to deepened dimensions of thought, feeling, and action. They summon our responsibility to sustain one another and the earth while pondering, acutely and tenderly, the crises of refugees, justice, and climate.
Bright Dead Things
by Ada LimónBright Dead Things examines the chaos that is life, the dangerous thrill of living in a world you know you have to leave one day, and the search to find something that is ultimately “disorderly, and marvelous, and ours.”
The Lost Words
by Robert MacfarlanceFrom Acorn to Weasel: a gorgeous, hand-illustrated, large-format spellbook celebrating the magic and wonder of the natural world. The Lost Words stands against the disappearance of wild childhood. It is a joyful celebration of the poetry of nature words and the living glory of our distinctive, British countryside. With acrostic spell-poems by peerless wordsmith Robert Macfarlane and hand-painted illustrations by Jackie Morris, this enchanting book captures the irreplaceable magic of language and nature for all ages.
The Kingdom of Ordinary Time
by Marie HoweHurrying through errands, attending a dying mother, helping her own child down the playground slide, the speaker in these poems wonders: what is the difference between the self and the soul? The secular and the sacred? Where is the kingdom of heaven? And how does one live in Ordinary Time―during those apparently unmiraculous periods of everyday trouble and joy?
I Have to Live
by Aisha Sasha JohnAisha Sasha John’s I have to live shows what poetry can become when stripped of prettiness and polite convention—when in survival mode. Spontaneous, its subjects unposed, its language unrehearsed, each poem has the effect of being taken with a polaroid camera. John writes poems that are resistant to overwrought aesthetics, poems that have popular appeal yet are uninhibited by audience, poems whose casual demeanour belie their fight against casualty.
SPOT_OceanVuong_NightSky
by Ocean VuongOcean Vuong’s first full-length collection aims straight for the perennial “big”—and very human—subjects of romance, family, memory, grief, war, and melancholia. None of these he allows to overwhelm his spirit or his poems, which demonstrate, through breath and cadence and unrepentant enthrallment, that a gentle palm on a chest can calm the fiercest hungers.
The Octopus Museum
by Brenda ShaughnessyThis collection of bold and scathingly beautiful feminist poems imagines what comes after our current age of environmental destruction, racism, sexism, and divisive politics.