Amazing year of 2025

Wandering around in the heat of Athens I heard oranges thud to the ground from the street side trees, and I watched gold fish swimming in the pond of an urban park.

This was early June when I was in Greece to attend the Athens Epidaurus Festival premiere of the music theater Field Guide [to the Lost Flower]. In collaboration with composer Michalis Paraskakis the work is based on my poems from Field Guide to the Lost Flower of Crete (McGill-Queen’s University Press). It was an experience I’ll remember for years to come.

Zoe Liaka writes in Tanea, “The choice of the collection Field Guide to the Lost Flower of Crete for Michalis Paraskakis’ work was no coincidence…[Michalis says] ‘In addition to the poems in the final edition, I also used several drafts. That’s because I wrote it after June 2016. At that time I was in Chania and I had a very personal experience. Eleonore was there.'”

Michalis and I created art from a deep state of loss, and as I watched the music theater I moved through many emotions from great sadness to true happiness at the beauty of the actual work. A singer walked down the stairs through the audience, and when she was on stage Michalis blew soap bubbles around her which refracted the light. He had chosen precisely which colours would shine in his astute attention to all the specific details of the performance.

Shortly after my trip to Athens, a song composed by Dorothy Chang and based on my poem “Knot” (from Wavelengths of Your Song, MQUP) premiered at the Early Music Vancouver festival. I was unable to travel to British Columbia but the song brought me great joy.

Alexander Varty in Create a Stir writes, “Further poetic journeys [in the Silk Strings program] will be explored by composer Dorothy Chang, but instead of working with ancient texts [as did Edward Top inspired by Tang Dynasty poets] in That Bare Light, she’s chosen to set the words of living Canadian writers: Miriam Dunn, Jan Zwicky, and Eleonore Schönmaier. Not coincidentally, all of them admire the concision and sensitivity to the natural world of their Zen and Taoist precursors.”

“‘All three kind of use natural images to talk about love and loss and the emotions around those things,’ [Co-organizer Christiana] Hutten explains. ‘They use the natural images to get at those emotions without using the emotional words that we often use to describe them…The three poems are each really exquisite.'”

The production work for Rush of Wingspan (McGill-Queen’s University Press) was in progress all year, and I can hardly wait to hold the actual book in my hands in March 2026. I love the cover design. In Dutch the word vleugel means both wing, and grand piano.

Multiple authors whose work I admire wrote endorsements for the book. In the coming months I look forward to making book launch announcements. Should you wish to do so you can already pre-order the book.