Becoming Beautiful Barbarians Paperback

Description

We are the Machine
We are the Rust.

We are the Empire
and the Heart that Composts Empires.

so thick is the hope in us
we sprout sunflowers from the soil
of rotting prisons

Becoming Beautiful Barbarians is the fire/imaginal morph within the THRUM ecology:

a living literary organism weaving re-enchantment, ecological belonging,
grief, and emergence in the threshold between collapse and becoming.

Enter the wider Thrum field

Ryan Van Lenning is a threshold guide, ecotherapist, wilderness rite-of-passage guide, and barbarian poet of the Great Turning. His work tends the crossings between re-enchantment, ecological grief, animist belonging, and cultural composting. Author of several collections of poetry, including One Bright and Real Caress, Watershed, Becoming Beautiful Barbarians, Riverever, Within the Cave Something Pulses, and Trust the Ceremony, F*ck the Ceremony, and Trust the Ceremony.

He lives among forest and rivers in northern California, on ancestral Wiyot land, where he continues listening for the poems and ways of being trying to sprout through the cracks. He likes cinnamon ice cream, fantastic fungi, and river ottering and is currently apprenticing to Elder Wind and compost piles.

More about Ryan and Wild Nature Heart.

Praise for Ryan’s poetry:

“Bless Ryan Van Lenning for listening to the wild voices and bringing back the news for those who have lost their way. Bless him for reminding us of our original love affair with the earth and of what we know deep in our souls. His poems give wise counsel: let go of the debris, remember who you are, do not abandon your luminous thread.” —Lorraine Anderson, editor of Sisters of the Earth and Earth & Eros “Ryan’s poetry speaks deeply and clearly to the awakening to our true interconnected nature, which is the only way we can transform our world.” –Molly Young Brown, Author of Coming Back to Life: The Updated Guide to the Work That Reconnects (co-authored with Joanna Macy), Editor of Deep Times: A Journal of the Work That Reconnects

“Ryan’s poetry sprouts out of him from moist, fertile soil – painting a lush landscape of sensual and philosophical magic. His poems transport you to a way of living in relationship with the earth that is lovingly intimate. Ryan integrates body, spirit, and social commentary into a vision of how to live a nature-inspired life amidst noise and overrun technology. ” Ariana Candell, LMFT, Founder of The Earthbody Institute