Poet Spotlight: Barbara Crooker
The excerpt below is from the “Poet Spotlight Series” highlighting poets anthologized in Poetry of Presence. Many thanks to the editors, Phyllis Cole-Dai and Ruby R. Wilson, for sharing this series with us and for donating a copy of Poetry of Presence for our Book Giveaway. Below is their Poet Spotlight on Barbara Crooker:
We thank the poets for providing the material. Today we shine the spotlight on Barbara Crooker.
Short bio: My work has appeared in a variety of literary journals, including Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania and The Bedford Introduction to Literature. I’m the author of eight books of poetry; Les Fauves is the most recent. I’ve received a number of awards, including the 2004 W.B. Yeats Society of New York Award, the 2003 Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Award, and three Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships.
Thoughts on mindfulness and poetry: The practice of poetry and the practice of mindfulness are, for me, intertwined. I can’t imagine one without the other.
A favorite quote (from my own work):
WHAT ONLY POETRY CAN DO
Make us stop, in our harried multi-tasking modern
(or post-modern) lives, away from the ambient light
of electricity and all that follows, and look up,
into the great glass eye of night, gazing in dumb
struck wonder at the coded messages of the stars.
Fun fact: So far this summer, I’ve picked seven pounds of strawberries, a whole tree full of sour pie cherries (with my husband)(and granddaughter), enough red and black raspberries for jam, and am about to pick blueberries next week.
Current work: I’ve been doing readings from my new book, Les Fauves, which features poems about France and ekphrastic poems on Fauve and Post-Impressionist paintings. (Ekphrastic poems have a conversation about paintings.)
Website and social media:
For More on Poetry of Presence
Visit the Poetry of Presence website. Receive a free mindfulness poem by subscribing to the book’s mailing list.
Mindfulness poems invite us to bring our whole self to whatever moment we’re in, and truly live it. They encourage us to be more present, more attentive and compassionate, in the living of our days. They grant us a taste of being good enough, just as we are, in this world, just as it is.
Poetry of Presence is a collection of more than 150 mindfulness poems, mostly by contemporary or recent poets. These poems call us to the Here and Now, and help us to dwell there. The Here and Now is all that truly belongs to us, and as the poets say, it’s enough.
Anthologized poets include Yehuda Amichai • Margaret Atwood • Ellen Bass • Wendell Berry • Robert Bly • Billy Collins • Mahmoud Darwish • Thich Nhat Hanh • Joy Harjo • Tony Hoagland • Miroslav Holub • Marie Howe • Erica Jong • Kabir • Galway Kinnell • Ted Kooser • Howard Nemerov • Kathleen Norris • Mary Oliver • Rainer Maria Rilke • Rumi • May Sarton • William Stafford • David Wagoner • Alice Walker and many more.
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