“In […] haiku I felt my grief was opening into something else and that something was love due to grief, because of grief. Perhaps I’d felt this love all along, with my husband, with our children, our families and friends, but it didn’t feel like just love-love, as beautiful and profound as that is. It felt like a love that was as big as it was because there had been loss, that only through loss could this love be completely seen.”
Discover beauty and transformation in grief poetry, explore identity and home through poetry, music, and photography, and celebrate a memoir launch with us this November.
A poet and grief group facilitator with the Lower Mainland Grief Recovery Society, Karen Parrish will edit to publishable size more than 1,500 grief haikus while in residence at Historic Joy Kogawa House from October 1 to November 30, 2023, and will present two public programs during the residency.