April Fools’ Day

Posted on April 2, 2025 | Leave a comment

Yes, this April Fools’ post is a day late – that’s the joke!

Although I planned this post about a week ago, yesterday became a little complicated and got away from me. (Note to self for next year: create and schedule the post as soon as you think of it!)

This is my new favorite version of The Fool, from Cats Rule the Earth Tarot, a lovely deck I got for Christmas:

And here is our own household Fool, in action:

Her actual name is Honey.

But she is also known as Stinkbug…Tiny Terror…

…Dagnabit…the occasional string of profanities…

…good thing she’s so darn cute.

Oh, yeah, and it’s also National Poetry Month!

Wreaker of havoc
we bring you into our home
who is the fool now?

Leave a comment

Posted in Tarot

Tagged , , , ,

On the moon

Posted on March 18, 2025 | 4 comments

Firefly’s Blue Ghost Mission I has completed the scientific portion of its mission, but its cultural mission as repository for a portion of the Lunar Codex is just beginning. The lander’s payload includes The Polaris Trilogy: Poems for the Moon, which will also journey to the moon’s south polar region aboard Astrobotic’s Griffin lander in 2026.

I am deeply honored to have a poem in Volume 2 of the collection, whose theme was Stars, Sun, Moon. I share the poem here, first published in The Polaris Trilogy: Poems for the Moon (Brick Street Poetry, Inc., 2023), in hopes it will encourage you to find a copy of the book and read all the amazing poems it contains from people around the world.

Without even getting out of bed

I cannot be bored with so much
world at hand: day slides in and out
of night; stars make room for moon
who yields to sun; clouds and other shadows
play through leaves, over the counterpane.
What more awaits me when I rise?

4 Comments

Posted in Poetry

Tagged , , , ,

LexPoMo 2024, Day 4

Posted on June 4, 2024 | Leave a comment

June is Lexington Poetry Month, and I’m late to the party (as usual) but not by too much. My first poem is posted here: https://lexpomo.com/poem/broken-things/

Two five-petaled blue flowers spattered with raindrops
Geranium ‘Rozanne’ – I need to plant more of these!

The last three quarters of 2023 pretty much ate my lunch, and I’ve spent what amounts to the first half of 2024 recovering. I’ll skip the tedious details but give a few highlights: relocation of an adult child and an elder parent; four surgeries on same parent; two respiratory illnesses (mine); one very scary medication reaction (also mine).

I managed to write between major life events and even posted a few poems during Lexington Poetry Month, which can be found here: https://lexpomo.com/poet/2023/jennifer-barricklow-2023/

Leave a comment

Posted in Poetry

Tagged ,

To the moon

Posted on March 13, 2023 | 8 comments

I have a poem going to the moon.

No, really: way back at the beginning of 2022, I sent a poem in response to a call from Brick Street Poetry for an international collection of original poetry to be included in the Lunar Codex, a library of contemporary creative works that will be housed in three operational sites on the moon. The Polaris Trilogy: Poems for the Moon is slated for launch with NASA’s VIPER mission to the lunar south pole in late 2024. To my immense surprise and delight, my poem was selected.

The Polaris Trilogy includes work from all seven continents (researchers stationed in Antarctica contributed several poems) and dozens of nations and languages, several of them Indigenous. Brick Street plans a series of podcasts featuring poets who wrote in a language other than English, reading their poems in the original and then in English translation. (I’m almost as excited about this as I am about the whole lunar thing – I can’t wait to hear those poets and their work!)

Lead editor Joyce Brinkman talks about the Codex and Lucy Park reads her poem from the anthology, first in Korean and then in English translation in this interview by Susanna Song for the Sejong Cultural Society. Bonus feature: learn about sijo, an ancient Korean poetic form!

Although the nickel-based microfiche edition is reserved for the lunar mission, The Polaris Trilogy is available in paperback here on earth at Amazon. Click on the sample to read the foreword by project founder Samuel Peralta and the introduction from lead editor Joyce Brinkman.

Links:

NASA’s VIPER mission: https://www.nasa.gov/viper

Susanna Song’s interview with Lucy Park and Joyce Brinkman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDK0STIKHN0

Amazon purchase page for The Polaris Trilogy: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSWS61PV

8 Comments

Posted in Poetry

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Ringing out the old, ringing in the new

Posted on February 3, 2023 | Leave a comment

My new year celebration included two poem publications by Penned to Pin on Bowling Green, a wonderful community poetry project in the western Kentucky city of Bowling Green.

The first poem, “Rarities,” appeared in December, and the second, “Ghosts of Cherry Hall,” appeared in January, very nicely framing the transition from 2022 to 2023.

Here’s to a year filled with poetry!

Leave a comment

Posted in Poetry

Tagged , , , ,

NaPoMo 2022, Day 19

Posted on April 19, 2022 | 5 comments

I’ve not been writing as much as I’d hoped, but I have been reading and listening to poetry, and writing when I can. This is a derangement of a poem by Wordsworth, “On the Projected Kendal and Windermere Railway.”

Against the wrong protest, constantly voice
your strong torrents: winding, speaking, passing
dead hearts, if they be human. And of nature, romance
the beautiful peace and plead for rapture’s glance,
the traveler given pause at the forest’s head.
Seen in bright threat, baffled and thrown, random
fields admit the pattern, are lured by false utility
and scorn. Who bemoans the change, ruthless
and musty, endured by this blighted parish?
Blow hope to flowers, early and pure, kept busy
in the world of youth, sown in retirement.
Schemes assault the rash, secure in the ground
of English, naked then, railed away:
it is merely the wind, kindled on the project.

‘April Queen’ daffodil, a gift from my daughter

5 Comments

Posted in Poetry

Tagged , , , , , ,

Finding

Posted on March 9, 2022 | 1 comment

Articles, interviews, etc. often turn into poems as I read. This isn’t a found poem in the proper sense, as I’ve modified the original text, but I did find it, in my own way.

The language of silence
(after Kate Gale)

we spend our nights
at the bottom of a well
lit by our own imaginations

we are sailing on a canoe
in the dark over the moon
to find the island of forgiveness

every poem is a prayer
to the universe
for not being perfect

https://trishhopkinson.com/2022/02/13/the-possibilities-of-medusa-the-loneliest-girl-guest-blog-post-kate-gale/

Tete-a-tete daffodils from the yard

1 Comment

Posted in Poetry

Tagged , ,

Poem for the first week of March 2022

Posted on March 4, 2022 | Leave a comment

In like a lion
(after Jeannine Hall Gailey)

This week is so strange: crocus open
beneath the ancient cherry tree as Russian bombs
fall on the Mother of Cities; mask mandates drop
and my head throbs with the whiplash
weather. I feel I should be tough, resilient
as the flowers, but my body betrays
me with fevers, dark circles, a nagging cough,
uneasy dreams – it knows things
are really not okay, no matter what
meditation apps, herbal teas, or vitamins
I apply to this uncomfortable spring.

I read this blog post by Jeannine Hall Gailey a couple days ago, and images and thoughts from my own week coalesced around her words. The poem practically wrote itself.

Leave a comment

Posted in Poetry

Tagged , , , , , ,

Poems in Stick Figure Poetry, Jaden

Posted on January 3, 2022 | 3 comments

The new year began on an exciting note with the Winter 2022 issue of Stick Figure Poetry, which contains my poem “Seattle Snow Storm.” I want to give a shout-out to Jeannine Hall Gailey, whose blog post from a couple years ago inspired the poem. Thank you, Jeannine, and thank you, Stick Figure Poetry!

And earlier in 2021, right before the second half of the year ate my lunch, two other poems of mine were published in Issue #2 of Jaden Magazine, a gorgeous publication of Small Leaf Press in the UK. One of them (“Shuffle”) can be seen in the left-hand column on the second preview page. Thank you, Candice and the rest of the Small Leaf team!

Here’s wishing for us all a year of new opportunities, new ideas, and new perspectives.

3 Comments

Posted in Poetry

Tagged , , , , ,

LexPoMo 2021, Day 30

Posted on June 30, 2021 | Leave a comment

We’ve reached the end of Lexington Poetry Month, so here’s my wrap-up post. I wrote a poem all but two days, and double-posted several days when my schedule got a little nutty. All in all, I consider it a pretty successful poetry month.

You can access my LexPoMo poems here: https://lexpomo.com/poet/2021/2021-04-15-150103-jennifer-barricklow/

More than 2,700 poems have been posted at the time of this writing, and there are still a couple hours left! Check out the work of the 183 poets who took part this year at https://lexpomo.com/

Here’s the catfish featured in one of my later poems:

Leave a comment

Posted in Poetry

Tagged , , ,