Overview

If I Were God is a collection of accessible poetry and prose. Taking her cue from cookbook authors like Yotam Ottolenghi who introduce recipes with personal vignettes, Genevieve Chornenki presents her poems with short lead-ins. In language that is musical but never mystifying, she explains what inspired each poem and alerts readers to sound patterns and poetic forms. She points out role models like W.H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Frost, and Phillip Larkin whose works remain accessible to people from all walks of life. Genevieve takes the pretentiousness right out of poetry. -Chris Swail, Life & Health Coach Genevieve welcomes avid readers who shy away from poetry because they find it baffling or opaque. Her poems reach for the power we all long for in today's confounding world. She dares to address public figures like Meng Wanzhou and Vladimir Putin, and weighs in on contemporary issues from ambient city noise to farrowing crates, from the failings of the great I AM to the hubris of modern obituaries. Reading Genevieve's work appeals to my ego and makes me feel much smarter than I am. -Kelley Korbin, Communications Strategist Genevieve's poetry-lyrical, other-worldly, and transformational-is, above all else, accessible to readers. -Cheryl Gaster, Human Rights Mediator & Retired Lawyer Genevieve's visually vivid poetry engages me the way films do. -Yuanda Zheng, Literacy & Numeracy Educator I haven't read poetry since university and enjoyed finding the muscles again. -Ian Taylor, Payments Executive The poems in If I Were God conjure equal amounts of wonder and woe, traversing the human condition. We are cicadas, Genevieve suggests, creatures who mature from darkness to light. We sightless ones drawing root sap thirteen years or more, waxen and white in silent slots, pinioned by demands of the day -diapers and dubious careers memos and deadlines- now moult and creep to the light. Not to mate and die-such waste! but for our ravenous eyes and the songs they stir. Not for the praise of peers or those curious ears straining to gauge our heft nor the worry of success, the journal acceptance, the publisher's yes. But for the rough touch of bark the set of our wings the scent of coming rain a belly full of air.

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9781777496302

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Genevieve Chornenki loves working with words. For three decades she applied that love to dispute resolution, helping clients settle their differences amicably with constructive conversations, and writing educational material, including Bypass Court: A Dispute Resolution Handbook. But she believes words can do so much more. They can conjure places, evoke feelings, amuse people. They can be played with. What fun! Genevieve's lyrical meditation on eyesight, Don't Lose Sight, was published in 2021. A poet, author, editor, and literacy coach, Genevieve has had poems published in print and online in North America, Europe, and Australia. If I Were God: Poems for People Who Don't Read Poetry is her first collection of prose interludes and poems.Find Genevieve online: genevievechornenki.com

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