Becoming: A note on poetic resistance

I’m standing in the swirl today, waiting for a word or two to rise above the others—to capture my imagination, colorful as hot air balloons on a blue-sky day.

Thank you!

I posted last week about some new creative voicings I am exploring. I am grateful for your many expressions of curiosity and support. We live in a swirling chaos of words. You honor me by reading some of mine.

I’m standing in the swirl today, waiting for a word or two to rise above the others to capture my imagination, colorful as hot air balloons on a blue-sky day.

Here are the beginnings of a poem I glimpsed along my journey today.

Co-creating with the Sun

the sun–after a watery deluge–
eases up over the horizon
to tease oaks and maples
with gilded light
draping her rays over
dew-splashed limbs
an artist casting on color–
knitting the sunrise soil with
shadows and shine
and i–i sit and watch–
lift my face to the treetops
hoping any loose tails of radiance
paint my cheeks with
a lyric of hope

Perhaps you’ll discover a poem as you pause beneath a tree today. Or while wandering the cereal aisle. Or driving home from work.

Poems discovered on everyday journeys offer us a kind of hope-drenched resistance: resistance to the noise, to despair, to the powers that try to strip away kindness and joy.

I’d love to hear what’s stirring in your creative or spiritual life these days. Who knows–maybe our shared creative meanderings can become a chorus or canvas of hope in a broken and hurting world. Don’t worry if what you are creating is unfinished. Creations are always becoming. At least, I know mine are.

Who knows—maybe a poem will find you today, too. Mine found me this morning. If that happens, I hope you’ll share! Just add your voice in the “leave a comment” section. I’m listening.

When the Sun Was a Poet: A New Chapter

“Poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence.”
— Audre Lorde

Somewhere along the arc of my teaching and writing life, poetry moved from the edges of my academic work to the center of it. It didn’t happen all at once. But as I wrote more poetry and discovered its connection to my teaching and scholarly life, I one day found myself no longer just writing poems but living as a poet. A poetic theologian.

Today, I’m excited to share that my poetry collection, When the Sun Was a Poet: A Lyrical Almanac of Life’s Seasons and Seasonings, has been published by Kelsay Books, and is now available through both Kelsay and Amazon.

This is my first poetry book to be accepted by a publisher. My earlier collections were self-published, labors of love, offered from a place of conviction and care. I embrace this book is a turning point, not because it matters more, but because it marks a kind of affirmation, an affirmation of voice, of craft, of calling.

Poetic Theology, Seasoned

When the Sun Was a Poet is a thread woven through my new understanding of myself as a poetic theologian. The book reflects a way of listening to time, memory, body, ritual, and breath. The poems follow the shape of a year, with its solstices and harvests, its cold bones and blooming springtimes. The poems are rooted in the quiet power of seasons, both liturgical and lived.

For me, poetic theology is not only about writing poems that reflect faith or spirituality. It’s about practicing theology through the language of image, silence, and metaphor. It’s about bearing witness to the sacred in ordinary rhythms. It’s about holding joy and grief in the same weathered hand.

This book is an offering shaped by those convictions.

A Threshold of Gratitude

You can now order When the Sun Was a Poet here:

I’m so grateful to Kelsay Books for this opportunity, and to everyone who has supported my journey into poetic theology. Your encouragement, your listening, your witness—these are the real affirmations.

Blessings,
Jill

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