poetry

“I only wish they would take more poets into space”: Where poetry matters

If you are neither a poet nor think of yourself as a reader of poetry, why should poetry matter to you? First, perhaps, because it is everywhere—in story, in song, in odd chance assemblages or strange coincidences. This too may surprise you: not every poem is made of words. This is because, while poetry, like prayer, can be a medium of complacency or banality (think … Continue reading “I only wish they would take more poets into space”: Where poetry matters

Unknown's avatarKarin CopeLeave a comment
Activism, environmental reflections, Field notes

On Losing Power: Reflections on Generational Sadness

I realize, perhaps not unlike my neighbours, the edges of my mind are afraid of the quiet, like the way my body jangles just before a plunge into cold water. As if to enter into that silence will be a shock, a jolt from which any reasonable skin would recoil. If I let myself enter the silence–the way that sometimes, last night for example, I just let myself go to sleep when I lie down, instead of trying to read or to write, to prolong the day, finish my tea, stay unconsciousness just a little bit longer–what will I find there? Continue reading On Losing Power: Reflections on Generational Sadness

Unknown's avatarKarin Cope2 Comments
Activism, histories, nightwatches, postcards for near and future partings

What is the distance between standing by and being a bystander?

In a time of war, this war, the one in which, with US and Canadian sanction, Israel is flattening Gaza and killing thousands of civilians, what is the distance between standing by and being a bystander?

I dream last night that I am in a conflict zone; it is a shattered urban space. A family huddles nearby–a panicked father and little children. A bomb comes zooming in and right beside me a small boy is hit by shrapnel or debris. I scoop him up and race to a nearby clinic, which is only a tent, calling loudly for help. Continue reading What is the distance between standing by and being a bystander?

Unknown's avatarKarin CopeLeave a comment
environmental reflections, Field notes, from the archive, photography, poetry, sonnets

Sounds of things you cannot hear

This poem–really an exercise–was suggested by what seemed to me to be a found poem in Richard Louv’s Last Child in the Woods (2008).  In explaining “why the young (and the rest of us) need nature,” and what he means by “coming to our senses,” Louv recounts a game played by Janet Fout, an environmental activist, with her daughter Julia. “As they wandered through the woods, they would listen for ‘the sounds they could not hear.'” Continue reading Sounds of things you cannot hear

Unknown's avatarKarin CopeLeave a comment
Field notes, nightwatches, voyages

Nightwatch #2 (on boredom)

Everything I know about the sea and sailing I have learned from and with Marike. She does not speak in this piece, but, as in Nightwatch #1, is everywhere implied. Beneath the sound of the waves and the wind in the sails and the hum of the engine I am listening for her breath, for the sound of her stirring. I move quietly in the dark hours, so as to let her rest, every hour logging our position on paper so that should something go wrong with the power systems on the boat, we know (more or less) where we are. She does likewise as I am sleeping, sailing sailing sailing into the light. Continue reading Nightwatch #2 (on boredom)

Unknown's avatarKarin CopeLeave a comment
Field notes, nightwatches, voyages

Nightwatch #1 (on demons and ghosts)

Night or day, when at sea we are always on watch, Marike and I.

She is the skipper, the one who oversees and takes charge of the whole vessel–without her there would be neither vessel nor voyage–and I navigator and cook, but we make all of the important decisions about what to do on a passage together, including how and when to spell each other off. Continue reading Nightwatch #1 (on demons and ghosts)

Unknown's avatarKarin CopeLeave a comment
nightwatches, poetry, postcards for near and future partings

Watching birds lift noiselessly after an explosion (Postcard with Ilya Kaminsky)

The house cracks with cold and I wake as if gunshot, veering from dream into thumping pressure on my eardrums. I am inside Ilya Kaminsky’s republic of the deaf watching birds lift noiselessly into the sky after an explosion. The news coming from the Ukraine, from Odessa and Kharkiv and Lviv and Kyiv is uniformly terrible. Continue reading Watching birds lift noiselessly after an explosion (Postcard with Ilya Kaminsky)

Unknown's avatarKarin CopeLeave a comment