In my little life / I hope to hold /some wonder

Some Force at the Centre of Our SilenceText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedIn my little life I hope to holdsome wonder — like so manybevelled stones that I pile up to mark a place to return tothat you find & add to. As our aspirational spirits crash,the ... let’s call it spindrift moistens the moss which has grown in the elapsed centuries between the oceans and stones.This builds our solid green dreamlife,grounding us helpmates.A Prayer to the DissenterText within this block will maintain its original spacing when published “The anus of an angel is a star”scrawled young William Blake on the Covent Gardenjakes of a stipple engraver whose face worethe look of a man about to be hanged, all of which Blake toldhis father after their enquiry into an apprenticeship that was not to be. Long after Blake took his beatings, the stipple engraver rose to fame as the last to die from the Tyburn hanging tree. At the age of ten, as far as ever Blake could saunter outside London, he looked up into the darksome air into tree boughs swaying under cherubic wings his home report bringing him close to another purpling. Did those blows glitter out in pain sidereal, a private aurora? Young Blake, old Blake, dead Blake; however you transpirefrom room to room shuffling out the creaks from old pains, gift us again through your visions, rushlit and ribald, eyes ever upon us, the gumption to tear the world a new one.

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Kevin Spenst has authored sixteen chapbooks plus an upcoming one with Anstruther Press, and four full-length books of poetry including the latest, A Bouquet Brought Back from Space (Anvil Press). He’s an organizer for the Dead Poets Reading Series, writes for subTerrain magazine, occasionally co-hosts Wax Poetic on Vancouver Co-op Radio, and teaches poetry at SFU’s The Writer’s Studio in Vancouver on unceded Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh territory.“Some Force at the Centre of Our Silence” and “A Prayer to the Dissenter” from A Bouquet Brought Back from Space (Anvil Press, 2024). Published with permission of Anvil Press. Copyright © 2025 Kevin Spenst Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published A Bouquet Brought Back from Space by Kevin SpenstAnvil Press, 2024

Publisher’s Description

In a secularized society, what kind of faith in our collective powers and imaginations can be patch-worked together, and what might be the role of angels? Through multiple locales, languages, and spiritualities, A Bouquet Brought Back from Space both subverts and sublimates traditions of religious poetry, love poetry, and song.

Playful in form and formed full of play, this fourth book of poetry by Kevin Spenst explores loss, love and faith through the palindrome, Madlib, Fibonacci, found poem, prose poem, sonnet and various strains of free verse. Spenst meditates on mental health, poetic friendships and influences, and the possibility of there being an angel assigned to the Mennonites at the beginning of their global journey.

These poems sing, cry, and soothe.

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