Tessera

Last day of National Caregivers Awareness Month here in Canada & I leave with Ellen Bass, one of my favourite poets & teachers. This: for you, for all of us.

The Thing Is

to love life, to love it even when you have no stomach for it and everything you’ve held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands, your throat filled…

poetryfoundation.org

Almost the end of National Caregiver Awareness Month (in Canada) with this poem by @brettwarren23.bsky.social , who writes exquisitely about loss of all kinds (species, family, friends). This is from her first book Map of Unseen Things (Pine Row Press).

Today a poem by @leilachatti.bsky.social from her collection Deluge, a powerful drowning and reckoning with body and faith (in all the ways they work and betray). In this poem, a partner's tenderness and care gently shift the landscape.

Timing is everything! Yesterday’s mail brought the latest issue of one of my dream lit mags— @arcpoetry.bsky.social and inside, a poem by me!!! Thank you Arc (for also supporting my writing with a recommender grant through @ontarioarts.bsky.social), thank you all carers. More exciting news to come.

@oliverdelapaz.bsky.social's stunning collection, The Boy in the Labyrinth, is a deep grappling with trying to know the people one loves without pinning them to a false wall. This brilliant poem uses a (oh too familiar to many of us!) screening questionnaire as its container.

Final push week for National Caregivers Awareness Month (here in Canada). Today I offer a poem that has so much tender care in it I want to keep walking with this daughter and her father. This is from Suzanne Nussey’s book, Slow Walk Home. www.saintjulianpress.org/slow-walk-home

Supporting and providing care for an adult who is also your child can be incredibly complex and confusing. There are some amazing writers who delve into this area with honesty and tenderness. @conniepostpoet.bsky.social is one of those writers.

So much art that has arisen out of caregiving, a kind of grappling with and attention to being present in care and community--loss, laughter, fracture, finding, connection. See Amanda Ross-Ho, visual artist (introduced to me through Courtney Martin) channel.hammer.ucla.edu/video/1978/m...

Made in L.A. 2025: Amanda Ross-Ho | Hammer Channel | Hammer Museum

channel.hammer.ucla.edu

National Caregiver Month in Canada and I have so many poems and words I still want to share with you! Lauren Camp's book, Is Is Enough is a tender, astute witnessing of what it is to accompany a parent with dementia, captured so brilliantly with Lauren’s incredible language, syntax, images.

National Caregivers Month in Canada, bonus weekend poem from @nickolebrown.bsky.social . A lesson in how to do it anyways and always to all the beings (trees, rocks, donkeys, goats, humans), how to dive into the muck of it. Because it is mucky. See the full poem at poets.org/poem/against...

From The Widow’s Crayon Box by Molly Peacock, a sequence of poems that explores caring for a beloved through end of life and after with humour, honesty, and incredible craft (there is a heroic crown of sonnets based on an 1883 book called Notes From Sick Rooms!).

An ache of a piece (about caregiving, medication, you know!) by @writesloud.bsky.social , xraylitmag.com/swallow-by-h... an amazingly offbeat yet tender writer, teacher, advocate, and caregiver. She has a book of flash prose out called First Kicking, Then Not. hgrieco.com Also look for her classes!

Hold the date for caring for the planet. Wednesday May 13, 1pm est. Join the global edition of reading work from The Nature of Our Times. Link to reading and more information here www.thepoetrylighthouse.com/.../ecopoetr....

Today, to honour National Caregivers Month in Canada, a poem by @janezwart.bsky.social honouring all the ways we are cared for by people who become close for just a brief moment. This is from Jane's first book--Oddest & Oldest & Saddest & Best. www.orisonbooks.com/product-page...

Bonus care poem, because we're inclusive and a little bit wild over here. This shift of a poem by @nancyland.bsky.social from her book Inconsolable Objects www.yesyesbooks.com/product.../i.... #NationalCaregiverMonth #caregiversupport #rewilding #caregiverlife

Sometimes there is a moment in caretaking where the shift in roles catches you off guard. This is just such a moment, captured so tenderly by the amazing James Crews, who has led so many of us into care & resilience through poetry. www.jamescrews.net/books

In 2025, @lauramacgregor.bsky.social won the CBC Nonfiction Prize with “The Invisible Woman,” drawing attention to the labour and love of all caregivers who sacrifice to ensure a family member thrives." www.cbc.books/literarypriz... #caregiversupport #caregivers #NationalCaregiverMonth

This poem ! by Marda Messick www.christiancentury.org/poetry/als-h... for National Caregivers Awareness Month. For all the caregivers caring for partners, for the dissociation that sometimes lets us continue. mardamessick.com

ALS: How it was

The diagnosis. The C9orf72 gene. The telling, the children, the mother. The hiking stick, the cane, the rolling walker. The lift chair, the gait belt, the ramps. The hospital bed. The power wheelchair...

christiancentury.org

May is Caregiver Awareness Month in Canada. There are so many poets and ‘prosers’ who have written achingly and lovingly about caregiving, whose words have held me, yelled for me, and tended me. I want to share some of that work with you. First, @jfranklinpoet.bsky.social poets.org/poem/prepari...

Stunning (& smart!) book mail from the incredible @knifeforkbook. Jim Johnstone’s new work (An Eye for an Eye), which you need a wee key to unlock (google Theseus’s boat), Michael Prior, and the always thoughtful & beautiful words of Sadiqa de Meijer.

The Nature of Our Times poetry reading with some fantastic poets including moi & @yvonneblomerwrites.bsky.social May 13. Link to register www.thepoetrylighthouse.com/events-and-p...

Stone Circle Review@stonecirclereview.bsky.social · 4mo ago

“mostly it was dust neither of us wanted to take a broom to.” This poem! By @moritherapy.bsky.social

POEM 328: "Mother Verse" by Isabella Mori (@moritherapy.bsky.social) "Me, I crawled around on those pieces and to my knees stuck words starting with B, alliterations, sandpainting-stories, and commas I had to defend with my life." stonecirclereview.com/mother-verse/ #Poem #Poetry #PoetryCommunity

rob mclennan@robmclennan.bsky.social · 4mo ago

This! Just up thanks to an invite from @robmclennan.bsky.social . Photo for fun! Part of a manuscript I am working on thanks to support from an Ontario Arts Council Recommender Grant & Palimpsest Books.

National Poetry Month (via @chaudierebooks.bsky.social) : Nancy Huggett, / @nancyhuggett.bsky.social ; chaudierebooks.blogspot.com/2026/04/nati...

For Better or For Worse--a new poem of mine, from a prompt in a class with @joankwonglass.bsky.social , up with @pinholepoetry.bsky.social 's newest anniversary issue filled with stunning poems about place, and incredible pinhole camera images. pinholepoetry.ca/19333-2/

· P I N H O L E • P O E T R Y

NANCY HUGGETT For Better or for WorseI married the ocean, now life is a daily drowning. When the tide retreats, I lie beached, until I can push myself up to comb the wrack zone for treasure. Sun-bleac...

pinholepoetry.ca