Next >> Shulamit Joffre Shulamit Joffre is a former Montreal native living in Vancouver's West End. She has been writing poetry since she was 16 years old and believes writing poetry was a condition of her birth. She is also the founder and host of the "First Tuesday Assembly of Poets" reading series held at Chapters in downtown Vancouver. Shulamit has four books and one CD for sale: Syllables of Creation, Souliloquy, The Sacred Whore, The Bones of Small Dead Things and Sacred Passions (CD). Contact: shulamit@telus.net Selected Poem: Syllables of Creation We speak among us ten thousand tongues, each with a different name for love. It does not matter; we are the words of the Creator and we are the syllables of love, among many other things; this is the vice of living the path of no return fiery and filled with tongues of light, no matter the tongue. Gather together, scattering sparks estranged from divinity: become like a waterfall, cascading the light of grace penetrating the holy vessels bursting them, splitting the containers into millions of brilliant shards. I heard a story about a priest who had neither bread nor wine to offer at Mass. On the Steppes of Asia and in the forests of Aisne this priest offered the pure majesty of the real on the altar of the whole earth, along with the toil and the suffering endured from the beginning of the finite. This priest offered God the shards, the splinters and the tiny scattered sparks of light that he knew only the Creator could identify and love. This sacred offering held the estranged Goddess awaiting redemption or restoration, perhaps a gathering of golden sparks dancing on the ten thousand tongues spoken among us, spoken, in broken syllables, in praise of the Creator. Back to the Poets Directory Home