Homepage 2024

Ruth Thompson is a poet and channel. Her newest book of poems, JOURNEY BREAD, is available from Broadstone Books here.

YouTube – Ruth Thompson Talks About Her Work

Upcoming Readings:

• Sunday, April 6th @ 3 pm ET, Saddle Road Press “First Sunday” reading with Sandy Coomer. (Contact dm@saddleroadpress.com for link)

• Sunday, July 20th @ 1:30 pm ET. The Persistence of Cormorants Reading Series hosted by Gerald Wagoner. 2nd Street & the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn. I’ll be reading with Amy Holman, Susana H. Case and Billy Cancel.

2024 Readings:
• Saturday July 20th @ 4 pm EDT – Broadstone Books group reading
• Sunday August 4 @ 12 noon PST – Slow Lightning/Heat Lightning reading series
• Saturday September 21st (2 pm – 5 pm EST) – Poets House NYC – Broadstone Books 21st anniversary group reading
• Tuesday November 19 @ 7 pm CST – Black Dog Poetry

Journey Bread Official Book Cover - 600 width

This is a wonderful book by an accomplished and powerful writer. – Frank X. Gaspar

Wrong turns, demon wrestling, love lost and found, and the ongoing revelation of belonging to the natural world. – George Ella Lyon

A recollection, exploration, and re-evaluation of a fully-engaged presence in a richness of styles and forms from a master poet. – Philip Terman

Ruth Thompson calls beauty from the bright reaches of oneness and the depths “where flying cannot go.” And here in the in-between, she gives us a “dog grinning over his shoulder, jaybird yammering like no tomorrow,” “a wing of rain / coming in slantwise under clouds,” reminding us that help is all around us, in our long learning of gladness in the world. – Diane Gilliam

Buy Journey Bread here.

In My Grandmother’s Garden
The Cabin
Pay No Attention to That Poet Behind the Curtain
Having A Drink With My Daughter At the Casa Del Mar
Goldengrove Unleaving

Today’s Poem

Crow Teaches the Song of Himself

I walk out into kelp smell, clouds of swifts
rising from roof-edges
and here’s one fine crow—
taking, like me, the air.

Here’s striped poppies with orange flauntings,
yellow lupine, purple irises
and the smell of sulfur-colored mustard
and wild tomatoes—

and my friend this one fine crow
is swanking down the path ahead of me.

Ah, how he is taken with himself!
How he adorns the day!
For the whole sky rides in his blue-black feathers
and the sun of his yellow eye!

And I too now swank—
I too in his wake
loaf and stroll
and glint my shining eyes

at a pack of truant gulls whooping and hellinga
at leapfrog terns and peregrines
and small black-and-yellow bees in the lupine.

And we nod to right and left
over our gleaming shoulders—
two fine crows parading—

taken with ourselves
and giving pleasure

singing the song of being alive and fine to see.