Our warm neighbourhood gathering of word-lovers returns January 24 to celebrate National Compliments Day (and Robert Burns!) with poems of Praise. The praise poem can be a poem of close attention, so in a way any song or poem about a subject is a praise song or poem. Check out your Odes for more praise poems (Pablo Neruda’s “Ode to my Socks” comes to mind).
Come and share a favourite song, poem, song or short tale of 3-5 minutes written by someone other than yourself. Or just come to listen and enjoy!
After Hours is a monthly neighbourhood coffeehouse with songs, stories, poems and prose on a rotating theme. All are welcome to listen or join in. Note: this is not a literary open mic. Though local authors do participate, we are all readers sharing work we enjoy and admire. We meet on the third Saturday of most months at 1:30 pm at Churchmouse Bookshop in St Mary’s, Oak Bay, 1701 Elgin Rd., and are hosted by Cynthia Woodman Kerkham and Yvonne Blomer.
Subscribe below and select the Churchmouse Newsletter group to get regular updates on upcoming dates and themes.
“The Answer”
Robert Burns
Ev’n thena wish (I mind its power)
A wish, that to my latest hour
Shall strongly heave my breast;
That I for poor auld Scotland’s sake
Some useful plan, or book could make,
Or sing a sang at least.
From “Mass for the Day of St. Thomas Didymus”
Denise Levertov 1923 – 1997
ii Gloria
Praise the wet snow
falling early.
Praise the shadow
my neighbor’s chimney casts on the tile roof
even this gray October day that should, they say,
have been golden.
Praise
the invisible sun burning beyond
the white cold sky, giving us
light and the chimney’s shadow.
Praise
god or the gods, the unknown,
that which imagined us, which stays
our hand,
our murderous hand,
and gives us
still,
in the shadow of death,
our daily life,
and the dream still
of goodwill, of peace on earth.
Praise
flow and change, night and
the pulse of day.
Copyright © 2000 by The Denise Levertov Literary Trust, Paul A. Lacey and Valerie Trueblood Rapport, Co-Trustees; reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved.