Category Archives: Excerpts from Book “Make the Wind” Scars Publications (2016)

pure captivity

Posted on by Allison Grayhurst

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pure captivity

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Last day under water with

the dragging weight of toe-the-line.

I taught myself the art of manifesting

a carry-on bag full from the hunt.

Days drifting on the sandbox dunes,

gleaming but never fresh as a horizon,

snatched from my mountain onto

a foreign homeland.

Limbo dives into infertile meeting rooms,

tables as round as King Arthur’s invention, but no knights

are these, only sagging eager pretenders, saying ‘fun!”

when meaning

“O hell, this is a hell-of-a-climb!”

I know my magic, the hand I was dealt and have

learned to never underestimate a leap of faith.

I trust my God – already bright and joyfully burning.

A sword is harmony. I can’t think of a way

but around me is between me, and I am

swept of my burdens and my prisoners, trusting

to be clothed, this sacred baptism

into surf-riding the foaming plateaus of the tenuous

and difficult-breathing realms

unexplained.

 

 

Copyright © 2015 by Allison Grayhurst

Fire and more cover - Copy

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

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Published in “Zaira Journal, Issue 2” April 2016

https://www.createspace.com/6182200

http://www.amazon.com/Zaira-Issue-April-Mae-Berza/dp/1530859980/ref=la_B001KIWQUS_1_49?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1460717128&sr=1-49&refinements=p_82%3AB001KIWQUS

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Published in “The Peregrine Muse” December 2015

https://sites.google.com/site/theperegrinemuseii/home/grayhurst

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First published in “Dog Is Wearing Pants Literary Page” October 2015

http://dogiswearingpants.blogspot.ca/2015/10/pure-captivity-poem-by-allison-grayhurst.html

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Click to access Make_the_Wind20160404Allison_Grayhurst.pdf

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http://scars.tv/cgi-bin/framesmain.pl?writers

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You can listen to the poem by clicking below:

https://allisongrayhurst.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/pure-captivity.m4a?_=1

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“Grayhurst’s poetry is a translucent, ethereal dream in which words push through the fog, always searching, struggling, and reaching for the powerful soul at its heart. Her work is vibrant and shockingly original,” Beach Holme Publishers.

“Allison’s poetic prose is insightful, enwrapping, illuminating and brutally truthful. It probes the nature of the human spirit, relationships, spirituality and God. It is sung as the clearest song is sung within a cathedral by choir. It is whispered as faintly as a heartbroken goodbye. It is alive with the life of a thousand birds in flight within the first glint of morning sun. It is as solemn as the sad-sung ballad of a noble death. Read at your peril. You will never look at this world in quite the same way again. Your eye will instinctively search the sky for eagles and scan the dark earth for the slightest movement of smallest ant, your heart will reach for tall mountains, bathe in the most intimate of passions and in the grain and grit of our earth. Such is Allison Grayhurst. Such is her poetry,”  Eric M. Vogt, poet and author.

“Grayhurst is a great Canadian poet. All of Allison Grayhurst’s poetry is original, sometimes startling, and more often than not, powerful. Anyone who loves modern poetry that does not follow the common path will find Grayhurst complex, insightful, and as good a poet as anyone writing in the world today. Grayhurst’s poetry volumes are highly, highly recommended,” Tom Davis, poet, novelist and educator.
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No Stone No God

Posted on by Allison Grayhurst

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No Stone     No God

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I sang a stone, a star

retracting, turning charcoal, still

blood-fire aglow. I pulsed in the aftershock

of entropy, but never believed black

holes to be anything less than the pupils of God,

absorbing light, surrounded by swirling iris-galaxies.

Sucked through the mighty hurricane,

living inside the deepest of organ-flesh,

directing a liberating unfolding – a grand outside

poly-shield, infant-squalling. It is celestial traffic and

it is alive, caught in the mower, twitching, having

the edges shaved off to form a more easily

movable body-round – end-of-summer-stone.

I sang a stone, a star

tuned in to what flows out, seems like cement,

but isn’t, is a babbling, bubbling child – wonder

here – wonder at the root.

Limits are the end of all exploring,

the disconnecting, overtaking void, more void,

no food, no stone, no song.

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Copyright © 2015 by Allison Grayhurst

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

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Published in “The Peregrine Muse” December 2015, also as the feature poem June 2, 2016

             

https://sites.google.com/site/theperegrinemuseii/

https://sites.google.com/site/theperegrinemuseii/home/grayhurst

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First published in “Profiles in Poetry Literary Zine” October 2015

Short interview:

What drives you to write?
I write poetry because I have to. It sustains me; it keeps me sane, connects me to God and exposes my own personal truths.
 
 
How did you get started?
I started writing, mostly short stories, at the end of elementary school. In my first year of high school, I began to write poetry – not complete poems, but I started to explore articulating images with language. The real first poet I read in depth was Pablo Neruda, but I had been writing poetry many years before that.
 
Who are the best poets around right now?
Even though they are dead, in my opinion, the best poets that I have read areTheodore Roethke, Sylvia Plath, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Rainer Marie Rilke, Pablo Neruda,  Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Dylan Thomas.
 
Where are the best places to publish?
A lot of the smaller indie presses – online and in print (or both) are great, as they don’t seem to have an agenda or pre-conceived intellectual ideas or what poetry should or should not be. Most people operating these presses are poets themselves and do it solely out of love of poetry and in establishing a sense of community amongst writers.
 
What are you reading right now?
The Hills Beyond by Thomas Wolfe.
 
What advice would you give to other writers?
I don’t have any advice, but for me, I write a lot. I also throw out 90 per cent or more of what I write. I write only when I feel an inner push, a necessity to write. Also, I have had to learn that there is no one way, one place to write, it happens when it must- making diner, having a shower, before bed, walking the dog or sitting still in the morning when everone else in the household is asleep. Sometimes it doesn’t happen for weeks or months, and that too is part of process.

 

http://profilesinpoetry.blogspot.ca/2015/10/no-stone-no-god-poem-by-allison.html

http://profilesinpoetry.blogspot.ca/2015/10/profile-in-poetry-allison-grayhurst.html

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Click to access Make_the_Wind20160404Allison_Grayhurst.pdf

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http://scars.tv/cgi-bin/framesmain.pl?writers

 

You can listen to the poem by clicking below:

https://allisongrayhurst.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/no-stone-no-god.m4a?_=2

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“Grayhurst’s poetry is a translucent, ethereal dream in which words push through the fog, always searching, struggling, and reaching for the powerful soul at its heart. Her work is vibrant and shockingly original,” Beach Holme Publishers.

“Allison’s poetic prose is insightful, enwrapping, illuminating and brutally truthful. It probes the nature of the human spirit, relationships, spirituality and God. It is sung as the clearest song is sung within a cathedral by choir. It is whispered as faintly as a heartbroken goodbye. It is alive with the life of a thousand birds in flight within the first glint of morning sun. It is as solemn as the sad-sung ballad of a noble death. Read at your peril. You will never look at this world in quite the same way again. Your eye will instinctively search the sky for eagles and scan the dark earth for the slightest movement of smallest ant, your heart will reach for tall mountains, bathe in the most intimate of passions and in the grain and grit of our earth. Such is Allison Grayhurst. Such is her poetry,”  Eric M. Vogt, poet and author.

“Grayhurst is a great Canadian poet. All of Allison Grayhurst’s poetry is original, sometimes startling, and more often than not, powerful. Anyone who loves modern poetry that does not follow the common path will find Grayhurst complex, insightful, and as good a poet as anyone writing in the world today. Grayhurst’s poetry volumes are highly, highly recommended,” Tom Davis, poet, novelist and educator.
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Cupped

Posted on by Allison Grayhurst

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Cupped

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Two bodies of water converge, merge

coalesce – incorporation.

 

Lines of symmetry formed,

synchronicity mastered.

 

Laws owed only to

controlled experimentation – devoid

of succulent flow, surprise,

tied to the many life-draining

ramifications of technique.

 

The nodes of mystery cannot be uncovered,

only the outline revealed, after that,

the root mantra gets conveyed.

 

Like futile attempts at flossing between

two great mountains bonded

by unrest and solid slates –

century-slow-permanent addition.

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Copyright © 2014 by Allison Grayhurst

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

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Published in “Calliope. Volume 2, Issue 10” October 2015

    

http://issuu.com/robertolson8/docs/calliope_magazine_october_2015_web/23?e=15059207/30406270

http://www.calliopemagazine.com

Calliope-Magazine-October-2015-web

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Published in “Quail Bell Magazine” November 2015

http://www.quailbellmagazine.com/the-unreal/poem-cupped

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Published in “Viral Cat” Fall 2015

http://www.viralcat.com/fall2015issue.htm#956291116

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Click to access Make_the_Wind20160404Allison_Grayhurst.pdf

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http://scars.tv/cgi-bin/framesmain.pl?writers

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You can listen to the poems my clicking below:

https://allisongrayhurst.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/cupped.m4a?_=3

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“Her (Allison Grayhurst’s) poetry appears visceral, not for the faint of heart, and moves forward with a dynamism, with a frenetic pulse. If you seek the truth, the physical blood and bones, then, by all means, open the world into which we were all born,” Anne Burke, poet, regional representative for Alberta on the League of Canadian Poets’ Council, and chair of the Feminist Caucus.

“What a treasure Allison Grayhurst is. Her gift? To unfold for us life at this intensity of feeling and revelation. Who knew truth and beauty could be so intertwined and so passionate?,” Taylor Jane Green BA, RIHR, CH, Registered Holistic Talk Therapist, and author of Swan Wheeler: A North American Mythology, Swan – A Planetary Mythology, and The Rise of Eros, 2014.

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