Poetry and Hums aren’t things which you get, they’re things which get you. And all you can do is to go where they can find you.—Winnie-the-Pooh
Poetry can find us while we rummage through paint cans in a garage. While we walk through a metro station. While we sit in a garden. From the everyday to the faraway, it’s not so much where we go but how we choose to see where we are.
If we look closely, we might see that poetry lives inside paint-can lids. In the scratch lines running down a commuter tunnel. On the bare sepal of a rose in winter, shed of petals.
You could say I live to be found by poetry. Sometimes it finds me in the form of words, sometimes as images, but always sourced in spirit. I share what I find via writings and paintings.
At this point, you might be wondering: who is this person who talks about rose sepals and spirit? Here are a few official bits of biography, perhaps best imagined in the voice of Winnie-the-Pooh:
Anna Elkins is a poet and painter. She earned a BA in art and English, an MFA in poetry, and a Fulbright Fellowship to write art-inspired poetry in Germany. She has written, painted, and taught on six continents, exhibiting paintings and publishing books along the way—including her poetry collection, Hope of Stones, which won an Oregon Book Award. After many travels, Anna now enjoys living in a small town on a big river with her husband, Jared.
Unofficial bits: I am Very Tall. I love dawns & dusks, winter fires, and sharing a good bottle of wine with good friends. And, like the imagined narrator above, I enjoy honey (in fact, I wrote a novel called The Honeylicker Angel that takes place on a beekeeper’s barge).
I also love to travel, but I’m finding that the best journeys don’t require any gear or mileage. To paraphrase Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: the best adventure is simply opening the eyes of our hearts.
I invite you to look around my website and read around in my blog. If you’d like to receive occasional encouragement from the realm of art + word + spirit, sign up for my newsletter. And I’d love to hear about the poetry you find in this world—do send me a message.
May Poetry & Hums find us,
Anna