Out of Darkness, Light
By April Bulmer
Hidden Brook Press, 2018
John B. Lee Signature Series
Finalist: Next Generation Indie Book Awards
Out of Darkness, Light is a book of poetry written in the voices of fictional Cambridge, Ontario women who practice feminist worship by the Grand River. Spiritual, sensual, and earthy, these women claim their bodies and their prayers in ways that might have been discouraged by traditional religions. In their own tongue, they appeal to powers of light, including St. Lucy the Christian patron saint of blindness, to vanquish the influence of darkness in their lives. They also invoke the natural forces of various seasons to heal themselves and to protect their families. Wind, water, moon, sun, earth, and rain are all celebrated as spiritual inspirations and as influences on these women’s religious practices. Poetic and faithful, these feminine characters raise their voices and their spirits to their high priestess, Mother Scarlett, and to universal deities who sympathize with their plights.
Excerpt:
Avery
It is close with heat.
My sisters and I
dip our feet.
Our shoes
like turtles on the bank.
I pull myself through the river.
The hem of my skirt damp.
I rest then with the women
on the shore.
The rains come.
Soft mud.
Our footprints
and our prayers
washed into the current
like clippings
that new moon
we cut our hair.
Isabella
St. Lucy, my daughter wears
your crown of light:
candles balanced
on a wreath.
Outside, even dead leaves
open their palms.
The Congregation of Women breathes.
Prayers flicker in our hearts:
tallow and wick.
We fall to our knees.
My daughter
her hat of wax
bleeds.
Grammy
I dream my heart is a blue thing
a little purse:
keys and coins and a cotton handkerchief
damp with curse.
The skin of the bag and its scars.
But my mother’s rub:
a pale salve and a chamois.
My heart supple then to the touch.
Clean and stuffed with love.
All night the moon too
a sack heavy with rouge and balm
and a note from her mom …
Something falls from the sky:
leather glove?
And With Thy Spirit
By April Bulmer
Hidden Brook Press, 2016
Finalist: Next Generation Indie Book Awards
In her book of poetry And With Thy Spirit award-winning writer April Bulmer unravels the story of her soul like gauze from a bandaged wound. She claims we have passed this way before. Firmly committed to the concept of reincarnation, the Eastern religious or philosophical belief that the soul begins a life after biological death in a new body (human, animal, or spiritual), her poems are visions of her feminine roots firmly buried in her fertile spiritual soil. She describes the garden of women who bloom like damp blossoms from her womb. She recalls the stories of their roots, the energy of their suns and moons. April’s ghostly incarnations often come to her in “the moments before sleep,” their hair wild with dream.
April Bulmer 