Welcome!

Byrtrt February 20, 2016October 23, 2020

Welcome, everyone! I’ve changed the website a bit because I’ve been seeing lots of visitors, yay! and would like to make it easier to use and for you to find my poetry.

Probably the best introduction to me and my work is this short video that was made on the winter solstice in 2014. So I’ll repost it here, and keep this post on the front page for a while.

“Ruth Thompson Talks About Her Work”

Also I want to make sure everyone knows that the way to “follow” my new posts and poetry content is to sign up where it says “subscribe to get updates.” It’s at the top right of the site on a computer, and at the very bottom — you have to scroll down — on a phone. (Let me know if it’s in some other obscure place on an iPad.)

Thank you all for hanging out long enough to read this!

Ruth Thompson Poetry

Why Hungry Ghosts Must Keep Flying

Byrtrt January 10, 2016September 23, 2020

In Tibetan paintings, the realm of the hungry ghosts coexists with this one. They fly around and around us, wailing their lack, screaming to be filled. They are pictured with long constricted necks and vast, flapping, empty bellies. There is no way to unknot the neck and receive nourishment, no matter how much – or…

Ruth Thompson Poetry

Whale Fall, Fishy Wishes, and Minotaurs at Poetry Flash

Byrtrt June 22, 2017September 23, 2020

“Whale Fall,” “Reversing the Spell on Mauna Kea,” and “Minotaur,” three poems I read in the Poetry Flash reading series last February, have just been published in the Poetry Flash Literary Review. My thanks to Poetry Flash editor Joyce Jenkins for including me among poets I admire so much! And thanks to both Joyce Jenkins…

Ruth Thompson Poetry

New Year, new direction

Byrtrt January 18, 2015September 23, 2020

On the morning of the winter solstice, I embarked on a new course as a poet: making multimedia videos of poems. Although I had been thinking about this for a long time, it actually happened inadvertently, without planning or effort, just after first light marked the turn of a new year. I had been meditating…

Ruth Thompson Poetry

Spring Along Cazenovia Creek

Byrtrt March 21, 2018September 23, 2020

This isn’t a new poem – in fact, it begins my first book, Here Along Cazenovia Creek, praise poems to the changing seasons in the beautiful hill country of western New York. There is no spring like that after a long winter. Here in Hilo, we have had the longest, coldest, rainiest winter in history,…

Ruth Thompson Poetry

Home Ground

Byrtrt April 10, 2015September 23, 2020

I’ve just returned from a writers’ retreat at Sea Ranch on the northern California coast. Sea Ranch is one of my heart places, a place where my parents once built a house and where their ashes are scattered. Now I wonder how it will survive. How any of the places I have loved in California,…

Poems - Ruth Thompson | Ruth Thompson Poetry

November by Cazenovia Creek

Byrtrt July 17, 2014September 23, 2020

November by Cazenovia Creek Clear sky, flying clouds. Elsewherea terrible storm — tornadosin the southeast, hail in the Dakotas;in Buffalo, high winds. But herealong the creek,in thin late-afternoon sun,in Arleen’s woods, only the sound of the river,wind held in the cuppedhands of trees.Molasses sunlight, a tangof darkness. The afternoondistilling. Over the creek,one last dragonfly. Leaf…

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