The Otherworldly: The ease and unease embedded in transformation. We explore fairy trees, the wee folk, thorns, blooms and portals. Also, secret gardens, hums and hummingbirds and the real estate of the poet. Catherine reads an excerpt from her second novel, The Most Cunning Heart, and Jessica reads her poem “If She Had a Secret Garden” from The Thing with Feathers. What is it to travel further into the self? Plus connections, relationships and how stories help us to see and be seen.

The Between: from writing to publishing to letting the book go. We talk about good questions to ask an author, energetic tendrils and the intimacy of the first person. Catherine reads an excerpt from her second novel, The Most Cunning Heart and Jessica talks about her first poetry book, The Thing with Feathers.

How does poetry transport us to other places? We explore inwardness through Gwendolyn MacEwen’s poems “Dark Pines Under Water” and “Invocations” and talk about how poems are vessels for holding mysteries and untold stories. We share the impact MacEwen’s poetry has had on our creative journeys, outer/inner worlds, what’s creepy and/or triggering, and how what we’re called to share comes through a full body response. Tom Thompson, discomfort, calling the voice up—all this and more.

Celery trees, human-watchers—we start with Catherine’s poem “What Birds They Were” and explore other eerie things. Then we explore about how it is we find our way through poetry to link the real and the unreal. We chat about the impact art galleries have had on our creative process— where life and art intersect—and how what inspires us has its own time line to surface. This was the case for Jessica’s forthcoming book, Bernice and the Georgian Bay Gold.

We talk about the connection between birds and poetic process. Catherine shares her poem “The Lifting” along with its backstory. Jessica shares the Christi Belcourt poem “In Neither Hope Nor Despair, Birds Fly.” We talk about how poetry invites us into a pause and takes us to profound places. We finish with Catherine’s bird poem “What Birds They Were” from The Celery Forest. Through air and motion, we take flight!

What holds the lessons we’ve learned over the years, what reaches out—a call to action or a pause—the path to possibility continues. We explore Emily Dickinson’s “I Dwell in Possibility” and Jessica shares her poem “When She Found Her Voice.” We chat about signs, connections, portals and encounters.

In this episode we talk about the challenges of balancing work and life and creative projects, the value of signs and what seeps into our skin. Catherine shares an excerpt from Æther: An Out-of-Body Lyric and Jessica shares a powerful dream. We explore synchronicity, mystery and the energy in the unexplainable.

“As if the top of my head were taken off,” writes Emily Dickinson when it comes to knowing poetry. In this episode we talk about how poetry is tied to the body. Jessica reads her poem “Season Change” and Catherine reads her poem “Worry Dolls.” We talk about perception, alignment of energies and how inanimate objects “speak” to us if we listen.

We talk about Catherine’s poem “Peas & Barbies” from Her Red Hair Rises with the Wings of Insects and the impact of Dorothy Molloy. We also discuss the glosa, deconstructed glosa, peas, rules and breaking rules and how we naturally link our own lived experience when reading poems. All this and we talk about “choir peas” too.

Poems are a place to find ourselves in. We talk about when to read poems and when not to read poems. Jessica shares her Emily Dickinson inspired poem “The Thing with Feathers” and Catherine reads her Tilda Swinton inspired poem “The Buried.” We chat about poetry and perception, pivot points, portals, P.K. Page and much more. Join us!