Sheri-D Wilson
[Author Name]
Biography
Sheri-D Wilson is the award-winning author and creator of 13 books, 4 short films, and 4 albums which combine music and poetry.
In 2019 she was appointed one to the Order of Canada, for her contributions as a Spoken Word Poet and her leadership in the community. In 2017, she received her Doctor of Letters—Honoris Causa from Kwantlen University. She is Poet Laureate Emeritus of Calgary 2018–2020.
A strong advocate for social change and community building, Sheri-D was Founder & Director of: Calgary Spoken Word Society (2003-2021) & Spoken Word Program | The Banff Centre (2005-2012).
Poetics Statement
“Read, love, listen, write, dance and sing – cry out – make waves – stand your ground firmly – experience big – be brave – be vulnerable – know who you are – give back before you take – and remember – you’re always learning – make mistakes”
Sample of Poet's Work
FOREST BATHING
There’s more to a forest than trees
Arboreal salamander
Red eyed frog, translucent as glass
Whip-poor-will, chickadee
Hornbill, toucan, hummingbird
Yellow-bellied sapsucker, aye-aye
Acorn woodpecker, sharp-eyed fox
There’s more to a forest than trees
Scarlet tanager, buttercup
Solitaire, chameleon, chipmunk, grey wolf, deer
Flying dragon, lizard lord, iguana, dreamflower, newt
Rattle bone, white stag, weevil
There’s more to a forest than trees
Laughing owl, hoot hoot
Omen rabbit, ladybug
Black cat skull, skeleton bone, Lo Shu turtle shell
Orangutan, bonobo, all alone in lingo
Bluebell, bluebell
Bird cherry, bird cherry
There’s more to a forest than trees
Orb weaver spider, fungi, moss
Monarch butterfly, beetle, honey-bee
Earwig, ant, Kinnikinnick, foliage bug, lunatic
Gypsy moth, pseudocentipede
Call me damselfly in distress
Cause I’m a wild life worshipping zoetic mistress
Tree hugging temptress, hemptress
It’s all arborolatry to me
There’s more to a forest than a tree
∞
I stand in arbor amour
In reverie, I deify all creatures in trees
The whole tree ecology, really
I can’t just idolize one tree
Must praise the whole arboricoles
Down on my knees, up from my root, I pray to trees
And meditate, as trees speak to me, and sing
In the wild of weald open wide world
The woods are quiet but never silent
I cross over unfurled, and turn into
A full-bodied dendrophile—Daphne! Daphne!
The wind blows that curious way, up my bark
Exclamation mark: I beseech you!
Allow me to wade into the wilderness of you
Slip into, dip into, your fertile earth
And there let me bathe
In your girth, your grass, your sage
Dear glade, feel the ring
Of a thousand lifetimes in each line
As you turn my page, voice and music wed
Tingling porcupines up my spine
All quill and musk, nothing left unsaid
By your erogenous breeze
If this be tree-gasm please
Cwm/ cwm/ cwm, draconid, draconid
Cwm/ cwm/ cwm, draconid, draconid
Let us breathe together, and slow
Allow me to soak in your woodland air
Oxygenize, in a perfect photosynthesis
Eco-erotic deliciousness—let me breathe
Eternity—aerie of eagles
Rustle through my leaves and needles
As you saturate me
Plunge me into biodiversity
Please, let me breathe, in your families
Of trees—dear forest—your chorus
Sings in aromatic keys
All ogham, shadow play
Cwm/ cwm/ cwm, draconid, draconid
Cwm/ cwm/ cwm, draconid, draconid
In harmony from floor to canopy
Take me, as I take you—the way you are
Humanities pheromone labyrinth, please
Splash me in old growth ecology,
In the deep sigh of phytoncide
Slowly immerse my entire being
Deep inside, till there’s no line between you and I
Merge and submerge
In each other’s eyes
We don’t disappear, but stay here
In a catharsis of true nature
Cwm/ cwm/ cwm, draconid, draconid
Cwm/ cwm/ cwm, draconid, draconid
Forest green
You cleanse me
Etch your initials on my body
Back and thigh, invisible tattoo
Ouroboros, snake and dragon eye─
Look up to your branches, your sensorium crown
Washes over, stillness, reverberates undulates
Cwm/ cwm/ cwm, draconid, draconid
Cwm/ cwm/ cwm, draconid, draconid
You are every book I’ve ever read
∞
I’ve stood in a stand of many of you, trees
And taken a stand for your mysteries
I’ve slept in groves of ancient Oak, and dreamed
Lost sensations awake, till I woke
I’ve danced among Trembling Giants
It is told, all 47,000 Aspen trees in the grove
Share a single root—and when we breathe
We breathe Quaking Aspens, 80,000 years’ old
In a breath of a billion leaves
In a breath of a billion leaves
In grief I’ve been held
In the arms of the hallowed roots
Beneath Gog and Magog, among Mists of Avalon
I’ve made love against the moss of Carmanah
To belong, to the cathedral chant of peace,
And I have overheard Arbutus scream
As she peeled back her bark, and sang in a high-pitched
Cry, source of essence, phosphorescent
I have seen tears of the tree of joy in rapture
A deep song sorrow I cannot capture
Unless I separate my heart
From knowing, I am human
As I long to belong with tree
Bone and bole and bark and branch
In a shower of blazing stars, draconid
I’ve wandered, perambulated botanical bohemian though Pines
And Firs and Cedars and Cypress
In the shivelight of Olive, Willow, Ash, Ginkgo, and Yew
Of Bohdi, Baobab, Redwood, Rowan, and blue Birch
As they died and as they grew
In my search, my endless search
For aeaea—aeaea—cwm/ cwm/ cwm
Draconid, draconid
Albino raven galw/ galw / galw
A forest takes centuries
There’s more to a forest than trees
We plant—we breathe—because of trees
We plant—we breathe—because of trees
We plant—we breathe—because of trees
Centuries—
∞
eco echo
eco echo
eco echo
eco echo
eco echo
it takes centuries for a tree to know
to speak—listen—ogham
eco echo
eco echo
eco echo
eco echo
eco echo
ouroborus—ouroborus—ouroborus
when I finally returned to the forest
the place I learned to love so long ago
and the forest was gone
cut down
to the ground—clear cut
and all that was left
was a hollow echo—echo
post-apocalyptic wind
everything else had died
and I realized
there is nowhere
to run
to hide
I am sorry
I am so sorry
I am sorry
©Sheri-D Wilson
The Book of Sensations (2017, U of C Press)
ODE TO MY MICROSCOPIC LIFE (IMPOSSIBILITIES)
ODE TO THE MICRO-OPUS
PART I – PREAMBLE:
Last year a Vancouver magazine calls me
And they say: In 1991 you were on the cover of our magazine
And one of our young interns was going through
The old archives, and they found the issue...
And we’d like to remix your pix
And use it on the cover of our magazine next month
Wow Cool, I say
And I’m thinking,
I’m going to look like I haven’t aged a day
In twenty years
Great, she says,
We’ll use you on the cover
And oh I should tell you
We’re going to call the issue
“Micro-celebrities”
Silence
Micro-celebrities…
Do you mind?
Silence
Micro-celebrities…
Do you mind?
Silence
Micro-celebrities…
Do you mind?
So I say,
PART II – ODE TO MY MICROSCOPIC LIFE:
to the micro-micro dot
the quantum shot—rife with “drink me” alter rot
to coming in under-the-radar
maybe millionth, between centi & zepto, milli & nano,
‘cause there was no race, in the first place
just open space by-which to muse
to dance up-close, no socks no shoes
with a beautiful delusion of bones,
like a rhizome poem; or to zoom-in tight
on a biome org—the complete unknown
so synonymous with anonymous,
my life’s almost hieroglyphic, microfiche-alistic
zip zilch zero—that’s me, a beautiful mythic
snippet of micro-free-dom, I say
maybe I’m an Apeirophob
with the mortal fear of infinity—not divinity
my life in the vicinity of obscurity
a molecular semi-celebrity,
if I were a marble I’d wanna be a peewee
surveillance cameras are the only paparazzi for me
Ode to the quasi, and the demi-tasse
to the infinite infinitesimal
and the ass with sass in a micro-mini
and the stingless drone, who lives to love
and the microphone, of cosmic-cosm’s above
so below; then again, the zero in tarot is birth
of our hero/heroine’s first breath toward death
the new million’s a trillion, and I’m comin’ in
nothin’ for nothin’, I’m a trilobite
compact disk—with nothing to risk, except the calamity
of my own omni-vision vanity
RAM ROM RAM ROM DNA—d’oh!
Microb! “attack of the killer micros”
they’re as big as micro is soft
so not to be micro-scoffed
and I hear Jiminy Cricket’s a macrophiliac
with a giant fetish, so I guess you’d say
he was micro-giga-boffed, obviously
I’m not an eve I’m an atom
the bigger I get the smaller everything looks—
a floccinaucinihilipilification
surfing the micro waves
Ode to being and nothingness and the minimalist
to the tiny titanic and the minuscule gigantic
to the micro macrobiotic and the macro micro-icontic
naked to the unnaked eye—we’re all size etherized
when the only way to be seen, is through a lens
on a slide—then, get a midway ticket and take a techno-ride
straight into humanity, cause that’s what I chose
over social insanity—compression oppression
denied, denied, denied,
as Gertrude Stein so aptly put it on her death bed
when she said:
Now what was the question?
Now what was the question?
Now what was the question?
© Sheri-D Wilson
Goddess Gone Fishing for a Map of the Universe (2012, Frontenac House)