Love & Catastrophē Poetrē

By Michel Weatherall, Stephanie Shotton, Summer Breeze and 11 more

This collection of local Ottawa poets address the loves and losses during the catastrophies of 2020.

 

"There is so much of love in this collection, so much to love in the time of a pandemic, to abuse the phrase. In a period where we are bereft of touch and intimacy, love in all its forms encourages us to connect and, better yet, to hope. And, as much as love hurts in "Touch," love always has the power to heal a very broken world. 

"Love changes and changes us with it, as evidenced in this marvellous collection of poems that encompass so much in so little space."

Julie Beun

 

 

"This collection captures an outpouring of emotion from a year of catastrophe and loss, interwoven through the themes of wildfire, pandemic and hurricane. The poems are vignettes of sorrow, destruction, loneliness and separation, but also with glimmers of hope. For lovers of poignant poetry."

Rachel B. Brown, CEO

North Grenville Public Library

• Language: English
• Publisher: Broken Keys Publishing
• Release date: Jun 18, 2021
• ISBN: 9781988253312

Michel Weatherall

Michel Weatherall is a native of Ottawa, has lived in Europe and Germany and travelled extensively. With over 30 years in the print/publishing industry, self-publishing was a natural step to his company, Broken Keys Publishing. He has published 6 novels and 2 collections of poetry. Other work include Sun & Moon, Purgation, This Burden I Bear, Eleven's Silent Promise, Rupture and the essays The Doctrine of Fear and Ebook Revolution? all appearing in Ariel Chart's online journey as well as a theological essay (“The Voice of Sophia”) in American theologian Thomas Jay Oord's "The Uncontrolling Love of God: An Open and Relational Account of Providence" (2015) Weatherall's current books in print are, The Symbiot 30th Anniversary, The Nadia Edition,  Necropolis,  The Refuse Chronicles,  Symphonies of Horror: Inspirational Tales by H.P. Lovecraft: The Symbiot Appendum, Ngaro's Sojourney,  A Dark Corner of My Soul (poetry), Sun & Moon (poetry), His publishing company, Broken Keys Publishing has 2 anthologies: Thin Places: The Ottawan Anthology, & Love & Catastrophē Poetrē. Honours and Awards include Winner of the 2020 - 2021 Faces of Ottawa Awards for Best Author Finalist of the 2022 Faces of Ottawa Awards for Best Author Winner of the 2020-2022 Faces of Ottawa Awards for Best Publisher 2021Best of the Net Award Nominee (for Poetry: Purgation) 2020-21 Parliamentary Poet Laureate Nominee 2020 Best of the Net Award Nominee (Poetry: This Burden I Bear) 2019 Pushcart Prize Nominee (for Poetry) 2019 FEBE Award Nominee for Creative Arts Finalist for the Faces of Ottawa Award for Best Author 2019  2019 CPACT Awards Nominee for Entertainment Excellence (Arts) 2019 CPACT Awards Nominee for Small Business Excellence (Broken Keys Publishing) Finalist for the Faces of Ottawa Award for Best Author 2018

Book preview

Foreword by Julie Beun

I was 14 the summer a love poem first captured my heart.

To be clear, the poem captured me, I did not capture it, not entirely. I loved it because it rhymed, it was short and it seemed to be written by someone love had overlooked, except for that one moment when Jenny kiss’d me.

Leigh Hunt (1784-1859) wasn’t a renowned poet, but for whatever reason – possibly his association with famous mates like Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, Alfred Lord Tennyson and Robert Browning who made up the Hunt Circle as his crew was known – his short, memorable ode to Jenny made it into the Oxford Book of English Verse, where I found it.

That summer, I was lost. My mother left us for another man, my father was too bereft to pay much attention to his five kids and so, surrounded by love’s catastrophes, I spent much of that season mooning romantically about the forests of Dunrobin, ON, memorizing and writing poems, and feeling superior to my annoying, caterwauling siblings.

I was, dear reader, emphatically not superior. I was raw, horribly precocious, had a bad pageboy haircut that rivalled Prince Valiant’s and had never been kissed. Vivacious, whimsical and joyfully confident Jenny was everything I was not and, I morosely predicted, never would be.

Jenny kiss'd me when we met,

Jumping from the chair she sat in;

Time, you thief, who love to get

Sweets into your list, put that in!

Say I'm weary, say I'm sad,

Say that health and wealth have miss'd me,

Say I'm growing old, but add

Jenny kiss'd me.

The poem said so much in so little space. I felt deeply connected to the author, whom I imagined to be an old (ie 40-year-old) man who had never been loved. He cherished Jenny’s embrace as the glorious, fleeting gift of a lifetime. I vibed with him: I felt as achingly unloved that summer as he seemed to be. (The truth is infinitely more prosaic: Hunt had just got over the flu and his best mate, historian Thomas Carlyle and wife Jane, popped by to check on him. Jane, or Jenny of the poem, kissed him as a well wish. Oh well.)

It’s a good thing I didn’t know the backstory, because Hunt’s poem was a whisper of awareness to my writer’s soul: small words put to good use carry great meaning.

They were just eight lines, but that summer as I hiked through the bush and along the rocky Ottawa River shoreline, I chanted them over and over, like a mantra for the broken-hearted.

Of course, love is so much more than a