by Michelle Tocher | Mar 8, 2023
I absolutely applaud the message delivered on International Women’s Day by Lauryn Oates, Executive Director of Canadian Women for Women of Afghanistan. Lauryn IWD message 2023 – YouTube In her address, she said: You don’t need to be Afghan to stand...
by Michelle Tocher | Jan 31, 2023
I had the pleasure of attending Sunday’s Muse’s voice workshop over the weekend, and she gave us the opportunity to write the story of our voices. Three words from her writing prompt started an outflow. The silent cry. It wasn’t there in the beginning. I’m...
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...
