ISBN: 978-1737054580
Paperback, March 28, 2023
6 x 9 in
162 pages
POETRY / Women Authors
POETRY / Family
BODY, MIND & SPIRIT / Inspiration & Personal Growth
Embedded Files
Evanescent Creature
Evanescent Creature
Poems & Meditations
Poems & Meditations
by Shavawn M. Berry
by Shavawn M. Berry
EVANESCENT CREATURE: Poems & Meditations explores the wisdom & life cycle of women through the archetypes of the wounded/magical/gifted child, the maiden, the mother, and the crone (Divine Feminine). These poems explore birth, sickness, old age, death, and rebirth. In them, Berry unpacks a myriad of experiences that affect and transform women as they move through their lives.
Berry examines the evanescent creature she’s contained since birth, the one who is empathic, sensitive, and fragile in a world that often makes her terrified and exhausted. She reveals the shattered strange beauty of the young woman she was: a woman as muse, catalyst, & traveler in search of all the errant & lost parts of her most secret self.
She remembers her experience as a daughter, unraveling her longing for more in the face of the pressures of a society that has long wanted women to remain small & stuck living amputated lives. She examines her current role as a caregiver – as her mother’s mother – watching as her mother’s essence disappears and she descends into full-blown dementia.
And finally, she ruminates on her sense of the furious, incandescent, numinous strength of women. She raises her voice in defense of the Divine Feminine nature of life itself, of this earth, and its oceans, forests, and luminous wild animals. Evanescent Creature is a book of searing poems and meditations seeking to offer solace and nourishment to women as they search for answers to the grief and beauty of life.
“Shavawn M. Berry’s verse in Evanescent Creature: Poems & Meditations, forges nuanced pathways into ancient themes surrounding both the ubiquitous and hidden nature of the feminine. Her masterfully poised hymns to the cyclical nature of life overflow with possibilities. We witness Berry step into the prophetic role imparted upon her by a Grandmother Spider in one of her poems, and powerfully spin evocative personal narratives, at times laced with delightful didactic panache.
Ironically, there is nothing ephemeral about the effect of reading Berry’s poetry collection, which lingers with the reader long after its ingestion, like scents inhabit ether on a midsummer night.
An unmistakably dazzling debut!“
—CATHERINE L. SCHWEIG, Founder and Director of Journey of the Heart: Women’s Spiritual Poetry Project, Chief Editor, Goddess: When She Rules (Golden Dragonfly Press, 2018)
“In Evanescent Creature, we are invited to share Berry’s invocations to memory, reflection, awareness. Berry’s words draw in the senses and nature to give us gentle snapshots of insight. Her verse is delicate, circling the archetypal journey of women, and we feel the relationship with souls that persist, appear, and ponder.”
—SARAH AMIRA DE LA GARZA, Southwest Borderlands Scholar at Arizona State University and author of María Speaks: Journeys into the Mysteries of the Mother in My Life as a Chicana
“Leap without looking. Evanescent Creature is a collection of shiver-inducing poems and meditations that will leave you to ponder, wonder, and marvel as you wander through the almost synesthesia-inducing warm embrace of words.”
—DARRAGHA FOSTER, Author of Love’s Second Sight
“Always honest, and sometimes gritty, Shavawn is on a search for the authentic and brings us with her as she explores why this is important and how it’s done. ...And if your life isn’t an authentic construct of love and gratitude, she whispers, get it there, and invites us to drink deeply of the heart’s sweet waters.”
—MELISSA I. HASSARD, Poet, Writer, Activist, Mother, and Director of Marketing & Partner at Sable Books
“Poignant, often heart-wrenching, Berry‘s writing draws you in and comforts you, all the while remaining refreshingly raw and 100% authentic.”
—LISA POLLMAN, Art Journalist, Borders, and Bridges
“When I first stumbled upon Shavawn’s work, I had to take my pulse. I was transported to a world where detail, magic, dreams, and realism played equal, often indistinguishable parts. I knew I was among the great, but I had no idea yet, how great until I got the chance to periodically collaborate with Shavawn and enjoy her writings on Rebelle Society. She has a way of capturing your imagination and turning you from a mere reader or spectator into a lively character or sometimes, even a co-author of her stories—a way of waking you up and stirring your soul and building a home of words and hope inside it I have rarely experienced.”
—ANDRÉA BALT, Co-Founder / Editor-in-Chief Rebelle Society & Creative Rehab
SHAVAWN M. BERRY is a writer of poetry, prose, essays, & stories, an empath, an elephant lover, a dendrophile, and a stargazer. She considers herself a curator and creator of beauty. The core themes of her writing are human connection, empathy, and healing [spiritually and physically]. Her writing has appeared in Golden Dragonfly Press’s, Goddess; Sable Books’ anthology, Red Sky – Poetry on the Global Epidemic of Violence Against Women; The Urban Howl; Trickster Literary Journal; The Huffington Post (HuffPo 50); elephant journal; The Good Men Project; Rebelle Society; Be You Media Group; Olentangy Review; Journey of Heart: Women’s Spiritual Poetry; Black Fox Literary Magazine; The Cancer Poetry Project 2; Kinema Poetics; Kalliope; Poet Lore; California Quarterly; Westview – A Journal of Western Oklahoma; Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry; North Atlantic Review; Concho River Review; Synapse; Living Buddhism; Blue Mountain Arts/SPS; and Poetry Seattle, to name just a few. She’s been writing about spirituality & healing & the divine feminine for more than forty years and has been a practicing Buddhist for the past 38 years. In 1998, she received her Master of Professional Writing (MPW) from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles where she specialized in Creative Nonfiction and Memoir. In addition to her work as a writer, she is an award-winning teacher, teaching writing courses full-time at a university in the desert Southwest. She lives in NM with six cats and one lovely old dog as her constant companions.
https://thewonderlandfiles.com/
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