A Poem is Found Within

April may be the cruelest month but April is also Poetry Month.  A letter from the Northern Women's Bookstore

Hello everyone,

I hope you are enjoying this snowy Saturday and not cursing this return to winter weather. April is the month of the unexpected, bringing us joys and challenges willy-nilly. But you knew that; April is not a surprise to a northerner.

April is also Poetry Month, so if you have forgotten or been to busy to let the muse of poetic sensibility enter your heart, April is here. April reminds you to pull out those poetry books that you love to read over and over again, to search out new books, new poets, old poets with new books, and, of course, to write poetry.

You say you are not a poet? That you can't write poetry? That is not true. Everyone is a poet. Are we not all creatures of oral traditions, parsing the complexities of our lives into economy of language on a daily basis? Are we not women familiar with white sheets?

Mary Oliver, poet of sublime beauty that tugs at your heart, says that to become a good writer of poetry one must read good poetry. This is the heart of the advice from her A Poetry Handbook that I picked up from The Northern Woman's Bookstore at the beginning of April. It's a slim book, a slip of a book, but Oliver teaches her readers many things inside those 130 pages. Like economy of language. Working with white space.

All poetry books at the Northern Women's Bookstore are 20% off for the month of April.

Mary Oliver's New and Selected Poems, vol. one is sitting on the back shelves along with a host of other poetry books by diverse women:

Being on the Moon by Annharte ("Like the moon herself, the language is fierce and beautiful")

It's Hard Being Queen: The Dusty Springfield Poems by Jeanette Lynes ("This is no hagiography. This is no tabloid adventure")

The Door by Margaret Atwood ("written in a sparse, elegiac tone that combines illuminating intelligence with caustic humour")

Cistern of my Body by Rona Shaffran ("simple, sensuous and real, setting down reality in a fresh way")

All Names Spoken by Tamai Kobayashi and Mona Oikawa ("Extremely provocative and uninhibited")
many others, including local writers!

it's Been a Long Time Coming

But at last it's here.  I first heard Rona read her poetry to a full house at Humber College.  Wow! I said and so did everyone else in the audience.

Olive Senior, prize-winning, internationally recognized Canadian author of a dozen books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction says:“Rona Shaffran’s poems are not just honest, intimate and passionate, but there are also no missteps, nothing that seems out of place. Some of her poems hint at a darker, deeper place. The illustrations not only enhance the poems, but they are also quite intriguing.”

The book is called, intriguingly, Cistern of my Body.  Mmm, quite the title indeed.

D.M. Thomas, prize-winning, internationally recognized Cornish novelist, poet and translator and author of The White Hotel says:“Rona Shaffran is an extremely talented, intelligent and sensual poet. I like the genuineness of the feelings she conveys. These are poems that get to the heart of an emotion or experience. The love poems are passionate, wry, succinct and ironic; poignant too. The poems of disillusionment don’t waste a word.”