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Hi S4ME poetry readers: In 1902, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke was young, poor, and struggling with writer’s block. He accepted to work in Paris for the sculptor Auguste Rodin. Rodin encouraged Rilke to observe animals. Rilke found a caged panther at the Paris Zoo and developed his impressions of...

Hi S4ME poetry readers, Thank you for your kind words. Due to my health challenges, I can’t share my poems in person, at a poetry reading for instance, so I’m glad to share them with you here. The HEAL editorial board placed my poem “Cartography of an Illness” next to an essay on compassion...

Cartography of an Illness To bear the day, I touch a print of a map: this old Venetian portolan chart, ink on vellum, drawn to guide captains to port. I once thought I could captain life itself, and sketched my own map—partial, raw—with ports marked school, study, and the ventures of...

Hi S4ME Poetry Readers, I’m touched that you’ve engaged with my work. @Robert 1973, I saw from your website that you’re also a poet. We live in a cultural moment of fragmented attention, and I would love for poetry to be an antidote, a path back to reflection. Diane Seuss, a poet whose work...

Hi S4ME Poetry Readers, For ME Awareness Week, I’m sharing a poem that draws on the Greek myth of Phaeton, a half-god who wanted to prove himself by driving his father Apollo’s sun chariot through the sky. Being inexperienced, however, Phaeton crashed. This story resonates for me. I fell ill...

Hi S4ME Poetry Readers, Thank you for reading my work - it means a lot. The poem I'm sharing today appears in a British poetry journal. My earlier work appears primarily in American journals, so I am glad my poetry about the ME/CFS experience is now resonating across the pond. The poem...

Hi S4ME Poetry Readers, Thank you for your kind words. I am glad you liked "Quintessence of Dust." Today I'm sharing my most recently published poem. I hope it resonates with you. Sorrow’s Gardener I’m apprenticed to you. Through time’s screen...

Hi S4ME Poetry Readers, It has been a tough year for me so far, as my mum (who is my caregiver) and I got COVID at the end of January. The infection was very hard on both of us, and it has taken me several months to return to some form of ME/CFS baseline. It saddens me that so many folks have...

Hi S4ME poetry readers. I'm sharing my most recently published poem. As always, I try to describe the ME/CFS experience as faithfully as possible. Wishing in July —for S.M., in friendship Our days were a host of common house sparrows perched on a fence – preoccupied with millet seeds...

For those of you using X/Twitter, the link to the poems is also here:

The second poem, below, is a sestina which seeks to shed light on the experience of those who care for ME/CFS patients. I've been very lucky to have my mother's unfailing support over the decades of my illness, and I dedicate the sestina to her. But the poem also aims to speak more broadly to...

Hello S4ME poetry readers. Today I'm sharing two poems that draw on the ME/CFS experience. The first is a sonnet, below, that explores themes of loss and longing. As some of you know, I had to stop working as a lawyer due to the severity of my illness, and since I fell ill quite young, I...

Hello S4ME poetry readers. Today I am sharing another poem with a Ukraine theme. This is a sestina, a poem of sixes. A sestina comprises six sixains followed by a three-line summation, and the poem uses six different end-words reused in a set pattern. This poetic form takes on a spiral...

April is National Poetry Month in Canada, a good time to share a sonnet I published not long ago. When writing, I’m often drawn to the theme of envy as part of chronic illness, and its subjective, contingent nature: envy can make me lose sight of the ways in which I am fortunate. The poem also...

As we approach the one-year anniversary of Russia’s war of conquest in Ukraine, I’d like to share three poems I published last year about the war, not yet posted to S4ME. The poems grapple with difficult themes: lament; loss; grief. But the work also seeks to highlight the brave defiance...

Hello S4ME poetry readers, Sincere thanks for your kind words and support. My particular thanks to Simon for posting my work on S4ME. Simon has edited drafts of my poems with a keen and energetic eye, and his comments and questions consistently improve my work. My poem “Pill Box,”...