“Ellen Girardeau Kempler makes an eloquent marriage of skillfully wrought haiku and stunning images. In these pieces, which slip into the consciousness like silk, she has mastered the deft word choice so essential to the form. Her lines stun with beautiful simplicity, enhanced by her glorious photographs that bring them to life.”
–Ricki Mandeville, co-founder and editor, Moon Tide Press
“This is a timely and powerful selection of climate poetics. Ellen Girardeau Kempler’s gorgeous photographs and exquisite haiku inspire a new conversation about what it means to witness today’s uncertain environment. This collection pushes us to consider our changing world in playful and unexpected ways.”
–Linda Cabot, Artist, Ocean Advocate and Founder of Bow Seat Ocean Programs
“Maybe the Chicago poet, Carl Sandburg’s definition of poetry fits the work of Ellen Girardeau Kempler best: ‘poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air.’ Kempler’s poems are love songs to nature. At turns elegiac, at others hymn-like (as she catches a glimpse of some sacred pulse), her observations are dynamic and alive, ever various and rich. From sea-carved rocks, to pomegranates, a yucca bouquet, a silk floss tree, she establishes felicitous connections between a keen eye, a feeling heart, and all that the natural world has to offer. From her native domicile of California, and further afield into Japan and Iceland; through parched desert tracks, flowing waterfalls, a Monarch butterfly on the way from ‘my milkweed hostel’, she continually startles.”
–Dr Derek Coyle, Carlow College/St Patrick’s, Ireland
“Thirst and dust, solitude and silence; fire and fruit, ocean, trails and tides…with spare, evocative language, and moving, often gorgeous photographs, Kempler exquisitely melts image into poem, and back, creating a radiant meta-narrative of our fragile, endangered ecosystem. Her delicate balancing of stillness and motion, word and picture, skillfully echoes our current eco-story, and gently asks us to listen, to look, and ultimately, to act.”
–Judyth Hill, Poet, Editor, Teacher & Mentor
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