Anita K. Boyle
Photo Credit: Abe Olson
Anita's Web Site: http://egressstudio.com
Anita K. Boyle works inside, and around, Egress Studio every day. She has a love of the natural world that has become the material of her poetry and art. She retired from freelancing as a graphic designer, and is now focusing on her poetry and art, gardening and beekeeping.
As a poet, Boyle writes at least one or two poems per month, sometimes more. As an artist, she makes paper, assemblages, artbooks, prints, and also draws in ink, paints in watercolor. The two things, poetry and art, complement each other, both containing aspects and opposites of the other.
Boyle becomes motivated to create poetry and art because, daily, the natural world acts like a wise professor, teaching through presentation, which is an old way of becoming informed about the strategies for living a decent life, answering questions about things from birth to death, as well as before and after those two defining moments. It is inspiring to learn a thing or two from a tree or a towhee, a bumblebee or a pond. Boyle is a pretty good student who makes lots of notes. The exams are in the poetry and the artworks she produces.
Egress Press announcement on publication of Why Horses.
Read a review of Why Horses by Bethany Reid.
Read "About Gratitude" from Why Horses at Verse Daily.
Poem from Why Horses
Neap Tide Rising
The generosity of ocean waves delivers tidal gifts to world travelers. Little white hats on the horizon draw nearer and nearer. Shorebirds gather together in the darkening dusk, then disperse in the morning’s weather. Seagulls sail the drafts, and dip into the tips of waves. Large logs prefer to travel alone in the storm, unless they hang together as a solid and dubious mass, a danger to dodge. The cormorant, goldeneye and merganser work the winter waves, a duty involving the cold dimness of the depths, and also joy. A seal’s head rides the surface, blinks at the wind, and thirsts for evergreen dew. When it dives under, it never returns. Otter tails rise up, too, and then plunder under the crest of the sea-gray table. The wistful voices of the dead wash ashore in the storms, an eternal chorale singing the holy tones of stones. The eagle sings with the awe of little girls, that high and gleeful pitch. While the sea watches her children, she dreams of her own lost mother.
Barbara Lloyd McMichael's Review
Poem from What the Alder Told Me
Listen. The Birds Speak
to me each morning. I hear them just before I rise. They’ve told me things I didn’t want to know. You wouldn’t care to hear about the little girl down the street, or what they did to her black and white cat. It was in the newspaper this morning, yet the birds told me yesterday at six a.m. They speak English, and it freaks me out. I’d move across town, or even further south, but I know they’d find me. No telling what they might divulge then. Besides, maybe I shouldn’t move. How could I give up this gift, this miracle of knowing what the birds say?