by Michelle Tocher | Dec 2, 2022
I can’t believe that I’ve lived this long without discovering the books of Kathleen Raine. Kathleen, where have you been all my life? Kathleen Raine was a poet and essayist who revered the visionary imagination and felt the heartache of its loss in a materialist age....
by Michelle Tocher | Oct 28, 2022
I was taking pictures of Hallowe’en skeletons and ghosts in our neighborhood when I came upon this one specter reaching for her little ghostly child. The moment I put my camera on her, the wind picked her up, and she and her baby turned in my direction. Then a light...
by Michelle Tocher | Sep 17, 2022
“To those alive to the order of reality which they embody, the old symbols will live again; it is not they, but we who are dead.” — Kathleen Raine, Defending Ancient Springs, 1967 Remember a time when words mattered? When you strung them like pearls...
by Michelle Tocher | Sep 9, 2022
September 8, 2022 — Queen Elizabeth II has died today, and I feel the urge to sit straight up at my writing desk and pen an entry in my journal that dignifies her. She was much more than a figurehead, and at the same time, that is the best description of the...
by Michelle Tocher | Aug 30, 2022
I’m sitting on a bench overlooking the sparkling sea off the western side of Cape Breton Island. It’s a deliciously quiet afternoon, a reprieve from the building project going on next door. The workmen have stopped. I hear the dull din of traffic from the highway and...
