From Inside These Wild Ones and Other Foraged Goodies

This summer I released 4 collections of earthy poetry. The first two are books 2 and 3 of the Re-Membering Poetry series. The third, Trust the Ceremony, is one I’ve been excited about for a while, and released 8 years to the day I did my very first wilderness ceremony. The fourth, An Ambitious Silence, is a home for some of the more strange, sometimes mystical, sometimes mysterious poems.

See the summaries below. Check them out, and I’d love to hear how they land for you.

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One Bright and Real Caress
One Bright and Real Caress is a celebration of the moment. Of not escaping. Of impermanence. Of death as life partner. With syllables of relentless affirmation, these poems bring an unconditional caress over all the textures of life and our multitudes within. As an invitation to presence and an honoring of the all-too-real struggle to not flee the moment, One Bright and Real Caress welcomes every conceivable crescent mood, slivered and slow, with no aim but to edge out more and more into the whole ceremony and celebration.

One Bright and Real Caress is Book 2 in the Re-Membering Series.

Order the Paperback Here.
Download here as a pdf or get the Ebook directly from Bookshop or Amazon.

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From Inside These Wild Ones
From Inside These Wild Ones is a collection of earthy poetry emerging from the author’s experiment of living outside with the seasons and the living sky as his heart-home roof. From bees, bears, and birds to storms, snakes, and silence, these poems honor the animate web of life and our intimate relationship inside it. The poems here are not only reminders of the mystery of our other-than-human kin, but evocations of the animals we are. Van Lenning weaves lyric, humor, and mythopoetic exploration to invite a multispecies, embodied, and soulful participation in the unfolding symphony of life. The beasts within are lurking, listening, yearning to live.

From Inside These Wild Ones is Book 3 in the Re-Membering Poetry Series.
Order the Paperback Here.

Available here as a .pdf or get the Ebook directly from Bookshop or Amazon HERE.

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Trust the Ceremony, F*ck the Ceremony, Trust the Ceremony

Arrive just as you are.
Arrive here empty,
arrive here full of all the sick and stuck,
with all the love and longing,
all your genius grief and gratitude
thick as your last tantrum…

So begins the opening poem of Trust the Ceremony, F*ck the Ceremony, Trust the Ceremony, an equally mythopoetic and intimate exploration of personal and collective transformation through the framework of wilderness rite-of-passage and the dance of habit and surrender, breakdown and breakthrough, and the trust that subsidizes it all. Van Lenning uses rich metaphors and personal experiences to bring to life raw vulnerabilities that emerge on the journey toward initiation. Beginning with an invitation to cross the threshold into ceremony (whether that be on the land or the whole of Life) with a simple trust, the poems dive into the uncertainty and often necessary deaths that fuel transformation. With nature as mirror and guide, the poems travel through themes of surrender and the paradox of sacred ritual and messy life. Finally encouraging an embrace of each season of the journey, Trust the Ceremony summons a “Deep Green Trust” that weaves individual renewal with both community and cosmos. If you are a nature and poetry lover, this is the collection for you. May the poems Trust the Ceremony inspire your wild nature hearts and be a small part of The Great Turning. 

Order the Paperback Here.

Download here as a pdf or get the Ebook directly from Bookshop or Amazon.

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An Ambitious Silence
The trick has always been to be quiet enough to hear the things that need to be heard. Or at least willing to put one’s ear to the ground (or sky or heart) of silence in order to pick up something new/ancient, beyond the all-too-human. It turns out silence is not empty, but rich with raucous conversations. The poems harvested here include a biodiversity of voices: of the more-than-human, alter-egos, inner voices, ancestors, Muse, Mystic, and Mystery. Conversations with archetypes such as The Artisan, The Priestess, Butterfly, the Emperor of Dust, and Tumbleweed Tøm, reveal astonishing perspectives on cosmic unfolding, grief, belonging, presence, and post-imperial imaginings.

Whether maniacal or mysterious, delusional or delicious, An Ambitious Silence offer a symphony of vibrant voices and a multitude of un-author-ized conversations worth leaning into. Order Paperback Here.

Or get the Ebook directly from Amazon.

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