Blog!
July 9, 2022
"In 1961 my mother committed my father to Crease Clinic, at what was then known as Essondale, the Hospital for the Mind. This was a euphemistic title for what is usually called a mental institution or lunatic asylum." This is the opening from All My Love, Alex, the second-prize winner in Event Poetry and Prose Magazine's 2021 Creative Non Fiction contest.
January 16, 2022
Leave With What You Came With is long listed for the BC Federation of Writers 2021 Literary Contest in the Creative Nonfiction category. This work is essentially a braided essay. It is a glimpse into the story of my father's institutionalization in a mental hospital in 1961.
January 5, 2022
How do you tell time? What signals mark the significant passages in our lives? Weather, nature, the aging body. Time is its own poetry.
December 24, 2021
In The Overstory (Penguin Random House 2019), Dory, one of Richard Powers’ characters, watches the twin towers fall on 9/11. She thinks, Finally, the whole strange […]
December 9, 2021
They say being human is to suffer. How do we embrace this? Mindfulness and self-compassion are key practices as we wade through the muck of our own humanity.
October 17, 2021
On a macro level, there is a big global change going on. Change happens on the micro level, too. Who is this stress-crafting woman, awake before light to swim in a frigid dawn, sewing as the midwinter afternoon darkens, crocheting by moonlight?
October 1, 2021
The objects we surround ourselves with express identity or meaning, revealing what matters to us. The things we collect, gather, curate and display speak to us, and also for us.
May 14, 2021
My people came down from the mountains, brittle ghosts armed with blades and hacksaws. They were big eared, small-footed and had red-knuckled hands. They carried no expectations. The men were tough and canny, ready with violence, religiously upright, but secret drunks.
March 2, 2021
Immersing my body into the cold sea, brings me to the present moment. That moment contains sky and sea, and the wonder of being able to do the hard thing.