Where the Butterflies Go

Living

Heather Grace Stewart — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 13:17:04 +0000

Sunrise Over the Rockies copyright Heather Grace Stewart

Take a deep breath.
No, deeper than that.
Feel it. Embrace it.
Breathe out.
Don’t let the noise of life
get in the way
of living.

Fresh start

Heather Grace Stewart — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 15:55:57 +0000

Every morning, I’m given a fresh start. The gift of a new day. I can see the sunrise, feel the wind on my face, hear the one I love saying my name. I can make today matter.

Every morning, I'm given a fresh start. The gift of a new day. I can see the sunrise, feel the wind on my face, hear the one I love saying my name. I can make today matter. ~Heather Grace Stewart

When I’m missing you

Heather Grace Stewart — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 23:40:32 +0000

When I’m missing you, I walk to the river’s edge. Frozen or free-flowing, it soothes me;
sends me back to our small adventures. Stargazing. Fireflies. All-day swimming.
Long goodbyes. No matter how cold it is outside, our summers warm me,
and we’re together again.

Winter walk copyright Heather Grace Stewart

Posted for tonight’s dVerse poets Open Link Night http://dversepoets.com/ come join us!

You’ve found me on the Nook! A little time was all it took.

Heather Grace Stewart — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 19:37:35 +0000

Hi everyone! Happy New Year. ! It’s been a great but busy start to 2012. Here’s an update:

NOOK BOOKS

You’ve been ‘Liking,’ reviewing and reading my books Where the Butterflies Go and Leap on Lulu, Amazon, iBooks, and now on the Nook! Can I tell you how exciting it is to see you finding these books in all these places? The Nook! The Nook! A little time was all it took

Please please please review and rate the books after you read them – even one line and those little yellow stars or thumbs-up helps other readers decide if they should even just download a sample. Every little click helps.

I now have sound files of my poetry readings easily accessible on a page via my Facebook page. Please Check it out!

http://api.soundcloud.com/users/10556407 << Heather’s Spoken Word Clips

And if you didn’t catch my video clip of my Oct. 1st bookstore reading, here it is again:

http://heathergracestewart.com/2011/10/19/my-oct-1st-bookstore-reading-via-vimeo/

HOSANNA CHILDREN’S HOME

‘The Groovy Granny’ has made its way to rural Kenya to a children’s home for orphaned and needy children. I learned about the Canadian charity Hearts for Change through my writing for the Queen’s Alumni Review magazine. It didn’t take long into my conversation with VP Jenny Caldwell to realize I wanted to donate some of the proceeds from book sales of Leap and Where the Butterflies Go to this incredible organization. I also sent them the book so that they could read it to the children when they visited before Christmas. Jenny sent me some photos from their visit just last week. Those children’s wide smiles are enough to convince me I need to write another rhyming children’s book soon!

THE CANADIAN LEAGUE OF POETS SHOW

In mid-December I was invited to read with other members of The League of Canadian Poets at a special benefit performance and party all rolled into one. It was so much fun, and besides, hubby and I had a great excuse to go out on a date before the show. Mmm…Thai Food It was wonderful to see old writer friends and meet new ones. I’m hoping to use the same venue -Casa Del Popolo cafe-bar and performance space on Blvd. St. Laurent – for my launch party for Carry On Dancing in mid-April 2012. Stay tuned!

THE COUNT DOWN

Carry On Dancing will be out in March 2012! Not long now. I’m excited. Are you excited? We should get excited. Get up and dance!

Or, maybe just tell someone or Tweet about my upcoming book release. There are links at the bottom of the page for sharing information about my publisher and my book and its early reviews with others on Facebook, Twitter, Linked IN, and more. That’d be swell Thanks so much!

Finally, thanks for being a regular reader of this blog. There’s a lot of traffic out there. I appreciate you crossing through it all to visit me.
Hugs,

Heather

The Groovy Granny made its way to children at Hosanna Children's Home in Kenya through Hearts for Change http://heartsforchange.ca

2011 in review

Heather Grace Stewart — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 17:49:41 +0000

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 55,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 20 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Where the Butterflies Go Review in iBOOKS (four stars): ‘These poems are like a key’

Heather Grace Stewart — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 15:34:14 +0000

‘A willful and successful destruction of boundaries’ **** (4 stars)

by Shawn Halayka, Dec. 24, 2011 under Where the Butterflies Go in iBOOKS

Anima and animus. Love and sorrow. Past and present. An array of dualities are presented to us in these poems, accurately depicting both the beauty and horror of life at the same time in a masterful way that gives no ground to useless pretense or extraneous detail. Most importantly to me, these dualities are not presented as paradoxical or contradictory, but rather wholly integrated. The end result is quite illuminating.

What really hit home for me were the poems about Challenger/Columbia and the tragedy of Di. These specific poems are deceptively short — it may have only taken a few minutes to read them, but then it took me much longer to process the resulting flood of memories related to my own childhood and young adulthood. These poems are like a key, and one’s own life is the vault.

I can only assume that some sort of fancy voodoo magic was implemented by the author, because I am fully enchanted by these poems. Superb work, as usual.

In a Café

Heather Grace Stewart — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 20:42:39 +0000

In a café
secluded and warm
time curls slowly
like smoke circles
and dances in the amber rays
of Tiffany lamps
lit mystically low
while sounds dim to a murmur
inviting faces at the window.

Outside beneath the frosted streetlamps
snowflakes hang in lonely sheets
and scurry from the fierce white light
while traffic roars and people rush
to get to where ever
they don’t want to go.

In a café
in the space before a painting
muffled voices chattering dishes
conversations I half hear
but the aromatics of this place:
coffee beans freshly ground
newsprint danishes perfume
and the after sense of you—
these stay with me.

from the collection

Where the Butterflies Go

Just Write It.

Heather Grace Stewart — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 22:38:50 +0000

I was asked to write a guest post about writing over at the Pen & Muse.

I had fun writing this one. Here it is!

Just Write It: Guest post by Heather Grace Stewart

Longer

Heather Grace Stewart — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 22:09:08 +0000

Frost webs on our windowpane;

Your skin on my skin;

Warm beneath the sheets—

Lie with me, lover.

Lie a while longer.

Our house lies sleeping too.

Listen.

Hear that?

Barely audible, or

another sense altogether,

Just beneath

our breathing,

the humming fridge,

morning traffic—

The dead, they whisper:

No work that will not wait

’til tomorrow.

Interview with a Poet: mark Stratton

Heather Grace Stewart — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 16:40:59 +0000

mark Stratton is an American poet and writer living in Columbia, MO with his wife and three cats. His poems have appeared in The River Paper, The American Zig-Zag Volume One (and forthcoming in Volume Two), MediaVirus Magazine and Four and Twenty.

Poet mark Stratton

My first question for mark was one that I didn’t even think of asking (because I hadn’t noticed) until I reread his first collection Tender Mercies. What’s with the lowercase m in his given name, ‘mark,’ and Uppercase S in his family name?

“I firmly believe that the Work is far more important than I am. However, I do not wish to show any disrespect to my family as they are quite important. Not only to me, but in their own right and accomplishments. So, I honor them and leave my given name lower case.”

mark began his writing journey as a self-proclaimed “angsty” teenager, but argues that back then, he “had nothing to say that hadn’t been said before.” He got more serious about writing in 2008, and continues to write today because it has become habitual and “more importantly,” explains mark, “it’s become needful for me to do so.”

James Brush, author of the blog ‘Coyote Mercury,’ wrote about mark Stratton’s writing style in his recent review of Tender Mercies:

I don’t always get what mark’s getting at, but the ride, the language, is a pleasure, and sometimes a line or two finds a place in my mind, takes root and won’t leave me alone. So the book goes back in the bag and I carry it around some more, sometimes forgetting it’s there only to be happily surprised again.

The most challenging part of writing Tender Mercies for mark was trusting the poems, trusting “when they were telling me they were connected as I was making them,” he explains. The greatest reward, now that the book has been out a while, has been “learning that the poems have resonated with readers.”

He enjoys being a part of online writing communities on Twitter and Facebook, but it puzzles him at times. “The very fact that people from all over the world have read my little scribbles fascinates me and humbles me at the same time,” he says.

Tender Mercies by mark Stratton

mark’s most recent chapbook Postmarks is, as he says, “a total DIY job, handmade and assembled by me.” mark even took the cover photo.

One of the poems, ‘Frank,’ takes on the persona of a dead speaker: I’ll see them when/they get here, They’ll hate it too./And we’ll laugh. /Like being dead isn’t such a big deal after all.

A sign of the times, perhaps, is that ‘Frank’ was sparked by a discussion on Twitter. “The “trigger” for this was a discussion on Persona Poems on the Twitter #poetparty,” says mark. “The story in the poem is true, except for the parts I made up. It was an exercise in writing outside of my own voice, and I was fairly pleased with the result.”

It doesn’t surprise mark that poetry survives, and in some places, thrives, today. “Poetry, in some for or another, will thrive and survive because it was in our souls, bone deep, to express ourselves. The form and patterns may change, but poetry will survive as long as human kind does. Poetry truly is a way to express in words that which cannot be said any other way.”

You can follow mark (lowercase m) on Twitter and Facebook, and please take a moment to check out his books Tender Mercies and Postmarks ~ support the art of poetry; support an indie author!