It was my great joy to partner with We Choose Welcome to share this poem, “Invisible” Women.
From the notes: “’Invisible” Women’ gives language to the quiet strength of women the world tries not to see. Women whose hands prepare meals, whose voices hum songs of survival, whose courage endures even when sorrow is ignored.
These women are not invisible. They are wisdom-keepers, truth-tellers, and bearers of dignity in places where injustice seeks to diminish them.”
“Incidental to the evidence
That meaning proves
Like a dough,
That thoughts do reach out
From the page
And claim us, knead
Us into form, rise
– An experience of the word
So bodily, eyes
In the meeting
Of print and finger,
Each word
A journey your hand
Must travel, send postage…”
Hello dear friends. I am thrilled to announce that after months of waiting, my next book titled “Bright, Inhabited Lives” is now out in the world! Find it on Amazon, or on the publisher’s website here.
As I encountered these poems again on the physical page, I couldn’t help but think again of these lines above, which you’ll find tucked within the pages of this book. I hope these words take you on your own journey into deeper layers of meaning, possibility, and our rich human capacity for life.
If you do pick up a copy this week (which I hope you do), it would make my year to see some reviews or comments come in, and hear how these words continue to live on in the world!
Together in the mystery,
Jenna
Through the arched colonnade
Of brick and glass
The sky draped, a cotton sheet
Of Easter blue
Forgotten on some larger being’s
Laundry line
Shuddering in the silent breeze.
The light ran down the glass
In golden waterfalls
Pooled into a thick, caustic shadow
Beneath the greying elms
Hunched into their years
Of watchkeeping
And whispering to their knees.
And where were you, reader,
When the first fingers of their minds
Crept up out of the wound of earth
And drank it in?
Continue readingCandlemas is a church feast with a long history whose roots at a later point tangle with both Groundhog Day and the feast of St. Brigid. Officially it is called the Feast of the Presentation, commemorating Christ’s presentation in the temple with both Anna and Simeon as witness.
The guiding image of Candlemas, as Simeon so beautifully sings, is Light – Christ’s “light to lighten the nations.” My recent book contains two poems centered around Candlemas, and I though in honor of the feast today I would share the second one with you.
Flame-thrown light tells you
what to do with this,
a labyrinth of interiority.
It will guide you out of
the sharp edged shadows
the rotten boards hidden
under the rug of strangeness
the creeping vine of doubts.
You throw salt over the side
of a crumbling wall
and you allow your eyes to become two
clear bells in the dark.
And candlelight reaches up
towards the night
as instinct tells you to raise your eyes
as the evening dusks
as a wisp of sparrows curl like smoke
above the trees.
Thank you all so much for your kind words of encouragement and overflowing support for Pilgrims I Have Been these past few months.
My greatest hope was that by sharing these words, they would be a spark, a point of connection in someone else’s life. I’m so grateful to hear that it has met you where you are, and connected to your own experience in some way.
I’m also excited to announce that several of the poems in Pilgrims have been selected by the Oregon Poetry Association to appear in their next anthology! I look forward to sharing several other places these poems will go in the coming months.
As we celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday here in the United States, my prayer for us are these lines from “Table in the Wilderness”:
Let us keep our distance
From the castle-building and the silent stage.
Let us be the ones to watch
The two trees swaying in a cold wind,
To never number what we have been given.
Let us be the ones to open a table in our hearts
And say, “Welcome,”
And say, “Enough.”
At some point last year, I found myself surrounded by piles of finished and half-finished poems, sitting at a crossroads of sorts.
It was rare for me to be squeezing in this much writing on the edges of my other paid writing work, and I felt lucky. One by one I was harvesting a windfall of autumn fruit, and it was slowly piling up into baskets.
Not all of it was beautiful; some had worm holes right through them, others had grown into odd-looking shapes. But it was all there, mostly edible, piled up around me. And I felt at that moment confronted with a choice: do I simply let it sit here, and risk the chance of it going rancid? Or do I take the risk to give it away?
There is an inherent tension in art – and I’ll speak particularly to writing since it is what I know best. Continue reading
Here in my home state of Oregon, wildfires have become enormously destructive the past few weeks and caused many to flee their homes. I’ve been meditating this week on two related images: the burning bush (which in traditional iconography is seen as a symbol of Mary) and the flight of the Holy Family to Egypt. This poem is written on behalf of, and mostly from the perspective of, all those who must flee home – whether because of war, wildfire, or any other danger.
Continue reading
I’m thrilled to give you this sneak peek of what’s coming October 1st!
My good friend Mary Gowen did an incredible job with the cover design, don’t you think?
It’s been a delightful project to be working on this summer and I’m so grateful to everyone who has pitched in a helping hand the past few months.
I can’t wait to share the finished product with you in only a few weeks!
“My deepest vocation is to be a witness to the glimpses of God I have been allowed to catch.”
Henri Nouwen
When I began this poetry challenge in Summer 2019, the subtitle I had in mind was “A sacred journey through an ordinary year.” In many ways, this year was indeed filled with the ordinary stuff of life – like many of you, I worked two jobs to make ends meet, worried and schemed about the future, struggled with a mental health diagnosis, made new friends.
In other ways, however, it turned out to be a landmark year, including of course a worldwide pandemic, the largest civil rights movement in decades, and the complete reorganizing of our collective lives. I never could have expected the way that poetry would become, rather than an escape, a way to fully live through and experience all that this year would bring.
One year later, the Nouwen quote above still feels like the most appropriate way to describe how I view myself as an artist. I’m incredibly grateful for the gifts I have been given in this past year, and I hope in some small way these poems can be a gift to you as well. There are SO many I haven’t shared with you yet, and I’m extremely excited to be compiling them into a book that will be available by October 1st!
Even though this poetry challenge has come to a close, none of the opportunities presented to me each day have changed. Every moment is still transparent with possibility. Each person I meet is still a fellow-traveler with a story to tell.
The question remains: Can I remain open to being changed?
Downwind of Grace 