Bonnie Thurston and Cheryl Denise

August 13, 2024
12:00pm - 1:00pm

Bonnie Thurston resigned a Chair and Professorship in New Testament, lives quietly in her home state of West Virginia, and has authored or edited 23 theological and 7 books of poetry, most recently Not Sonnets: Observations from an Ordinary Life (Cinnamon Press, 2022) and From Darkness to Eastering  (Wild Goose Press, 2017). She enjoys reading, walking, gardening, cooking, and classical music.

Cheryl Denise grew up in Elmira, Ontario. After nursing school, she worked three years as a volunteer public health nurse in La Jara, Colorado.  She fell for her future husband while helping to make suppers at the Homeless Shelter where he was volunteering. Now they live in Philippi, WV, in the intentional community of Shepherds Field in a timber framed home they built when they were young and brimming with energy. Cheryl is the author of the poetry books, Fences, (2022), What’s in the Blood  (2012), and I Saw God Dancing (2005), all published by Cascadia Publishing House, DreamSeeker Books, Telford, PA.  She has a spoken word poetry CD, Leaving Eden (2012) with music from Ben Regier, available on Amazon. Visit her on Facebook at Cheryl Denise, poet.

Featured Books:

Fences

In an overview of life from childhood to middle age, Fences grapples with fears, longings and insecurities while weighing the choices the author has made and the resulting rewards and privations. Mourn her changing relationship with a neighbor boy, first seen as a youngster running through the woods to bring her a Christmas card, to his mother's arrest for running a meth lab, to his own capitulation to becoming a meth cook.

As Hayley Mitchell Haugen, Editor, Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, observes, "'Fence work never gets done, ' Denise writes in a collection that expertly explores literal and figurative wanderers both within and beyond the boundaries of our lives, our loves, our comfort zones: sheep, family, tenants, preachers, depression, the imagination. Here, Denise lingers in the spaces in which 'a poem clamors to be written, ' reminding us, 'the harvest is for everyone.'"

Listen to the Heidelberg press "snorting like a stallion" in the old chicken coop as her father prints wedding invitations. Feel the unrelenting stare of sheep, the black slots of their pupils pulling you in, dissolving you. The world is a strange and wonderous place, and as Brother Lawrence says, "God is everywhere."

Not Sonnets

For years Bonnie Thurston has written short poems that focus on a single image or one revelatory idea. They were not sonnets, but were all fourteen lines long. The great sonneteers wrote sequences, often several on one topic, and in this Bonnie Thurston follows in their footsteps. The poems lead the reader on a gentle journey from home as they move through seasons in a sequence focussing on daily experiences that, in the words of Wordsworth, are ‘reflected in tranquility’. In these insightful, honed and precise poems you will discover the extraordinariness of the ordinary life and, mirabile dictu, wisdom. This is a collection to savour.

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"Lunch With Books" is the library’s flagship program for adult patrons. These lunchtime programs feature authors, poets, musicians, historians, and more every Tuesday at noon. Bring lunch (to your computer), feed your brain!