These essays celebrate the interconnectedness of all things, examining our spiritual lives through the cathartic influence of trees, the fugitive presence of our ancestors, the magical tapestry of the natural world, the deep significance of chance encounters with wild creatures, the beneficence of silence, stillness, solitude and serenity; and the search for meaning in a seemingly chaotic world. Peter Quince is an artist as well as a writer of novels, short stories, essays and poetry. He practises tai chi, meditation and philosophy, grows bonsai trees, follows Buddhism and Taoism, and believes that a quiet cup of tea is the answer to everything...

'God is Alive, Magic is Afoot' is a poem/mantra from Leonard Cohen's legendary novel 'Beautiful Losers'. It is a flash of optimism, and remains one of his most accessible pieces of writing.

How does the greatest writer of our time tell her own story? Immerse yourself in the creative universe of Margaret Atwood for a riot of life, art and everything in between

Every writer is at least two beings: the one who lives, and the one who writes

Raised by scientifically minded parents, Atwood spent most of each year in the wild forest of northern Quebec: a vast playground for her entomologist father and independent, resourceful mother. It was an unfettered and nomadic childhood, sometimes isolated but also thrilling and beautiful.

From this unconventional start, Atwood unfolds the story of her life, linking key moments to the books that have shaped our literary landscape, from the cruel school year that would become Cat’s Eye to the unease of 1980s Berlin, where she began The Handmaid’s Tale. In pages alive with the natural world, reading and books, major political turning points and her lifelong love for the charismatic writer Graeme Gibson, we meet poets, bears, Hollywood stars and larger-than-life characters straight from the pages of an Atwood novel.

As she explores her past, Atwood reveals more and more about her writing, the connections between real life and art – and the workings of one of our boldest imaginations.

My name is Julian Reid, a gardener from Wiltshire, UK. The title of this book, Totally Unexpected Poems, is based on my experiences, from things that have happened to me, things I have seen or listened to and people I have met throughout my life.

Poetry. "Caution and charity, travel and sensitivity, in sites South Asian, American, and European, control the humane tones and the short-lined free verse of THE WEATHER & OUR TEMPERS], which also reflects its author's other work as a scholar of Buddhism. Concise and welcoming, yet intricately tied to place and religion, this quiet debut could take off."--Publishers Weekly"Meditative and mysterious, these spare, intimate poems trace an inner landscape that stretches from Brooklyn to Paris, Tokyo to Kathmandu."--Lizzie Widdicombe of The New Yorker"The poet's spirit settles among objects, the quotidian flotsam. But how to keep the resulting words incantatory? This is Dominique Townsend's gift. Talismans are everywhere in THE WEATHER & OUR TEMPERS, and some of them are 'flapping encyclopedic wings.' While this is a book full of the sense of man's gentle presence in nature, it also rings with apostrophe and sharp conversations. The ache of being human hangs in the doorways of this poetry. You'll be the wiser for entering."--Peter Thompson"To read Dominique Townsend's debut book of poetry is to be seduced by a particularly spiritual, sensual, and uniquely modern world, where the questions of body, mind, and--indeed--soul, are sometimes painful, sometimes witty, sometimes searching, and always exquisite. These are poems to treasure and revisit."--Joanna Hershon

The Editors of Irish Pages - Chris Agee, Cathal O Searcaigh, Kathleen Jamie and Meg Bateman - have assembled a new issue of the journal, entitled "The Anthropocene." It aims to evoke the escalating global ecological crisis in the round, through many of its key components, including climate change, deforestation, the treatment of animals, oceanic pollution and over-fishing, the melting of glaciers, extinctions, land-use, plastic pollution and the waste crisis, the eco-vandalism of mining and the fashion industry, the extermination of indigenous peoples and languages, biodiversity and ecocide generally, and so on - and on. * A certain amount of poetry and prose deals with humanity and human consciousness more generally, in their historical, cultural, psychological, artistic and religious dimensions. * There is also a special section devoted to writing on the Pandemic. * As with other issues, however, there is also work included that does not bear explicitly on the theme of the issue.

Poetry. Audio CD included. FAREWELLIA A LA ARALEE opens with a nine-poem tribute suite that tracks the end-times dynamic of the American poet, Aralee Strange, and concludes with an appendix, entitled CINEMANUENSING, that amounts to an extra-visionary tracking of the filming of This Train, her late '90s full-length feature film that was still in post-production at the time of her death, in June 2013. Consisting of poetry, prose, photos and color collages, the book also includes an audio CD of La Charity in performance, delivering his nine-poem tribute suite aloud.