Holy Sparks: Poems

By Diana Woodcock

Holy Sparks is a collection of poems grounded in a belief in the kinship between the cosmos and its Creator. Biophilic imagery is used throughout the poems to suggest that reverence for the earth is a natural consequence of reverence for God. The language of poetry is used to interconnect the human, natural and sacred, and to express humanity’s moral and ethical responsibility to our nonhuman kin. These poems question what it means for humans to live in right relationship with earth’s lifesystems, and they suggest that our very identity is tied to our reverence for the natural world. They offer a space of confession, reparation and praise of what remains. Holy Sparks is a call to partake of Earth’s wisdom so that we might participate in the Creator’s ongoing work.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paraclete Press
• Release date: Jun 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9781640606029

Diana Woodcock

Diana Woodcock’s fourth poetry collection, Facing Aridity, was published in 2021 as the 2020 Prism Prize for Climate Literature finalist. Forthcoming in 2023 is Holy Sparks (2020 Paraclete Press Poetry Award finalist). Recipient of the 2011 Vernice Quebodeaux Pathways Poetry Prize for Women for Swaying on the Elephant’s Shoulders, her work appears in Best New Poets 2008 and has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Currently teaching at VCUarts Qatar, she holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Lancaster University, where her research was an inquiry into poetry’s role in the search for an environmental ethic.

Book preview

Preface

The Ecopoet’s Prayer

What are the odds

that any moment now the gods

will grant inspiration?

Still, I prostrate myself

and wait. All I really ask

is to be up to the task

of writing majestically

and puckishly simultaneously

in equal measure, to break down

the false boundary between

human and nonhuman species,

to bend minds, provoke thoughts

about animal sentience and intelligence,

provide evidence humans are not

the center of the universe, arouse

cross-species curiosity, ask

of my reader that s/he invite

the animals, birds and fishes

to teach—inquire,

Aren’t you tired of all the false

barriers? All I require

of my reader is this: Drop

the pronoun it and adopt s/he;

aspire to a higher level of thinking

about our nonhuman kin; and

consider how our thinking affects

future prospects of each species.

All I ask, my dear reader,

is this: Realize all life is one,

and as the air and oceans go—

and one by one,

each species—so go

us Homo sapiens.

I

Called Out by Bulbuls

There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground. ~ Rumi

Today I found yet another way

to kneel and pray—set out

a shallow pan filled with water,

a birdbath for the bulbuls.

Got quiet and still,

shut out the unbearable world

to be at home with white-eared softbills,

Pycnonotus leucotis, those precocious

socialites. Together we praised

the silent earth, her dark