Before the Sun Rises

Publisher: Homebound Publications

Before the Sun Rises is poetry of awakening and listening to the natural world at this turbulent time on our planet.  Gwendolyn Morgan evokes a dreamtime threshold of climate change, global initiations, corvid and celestial convergences.  She interweaves her observations of swans, deer and rabbits with morning tea and auto-immune disorders, tracking our personal and political realities in the context of the natural world with spiritual practices.  She names seasonal migrations, loon feathers, breath.    This collection of poems invites us to honor the messages of the earth as our ancestors call us to offer our gifts for the healing of ourselves and the world.   

Gwendolyn Morgan learned the names of birds and wildflowers and inherited paintbrushes and boxes from her grandmothers. With an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Goddard College, and an M.Div. from San Francisco Theological Seminary and the Graduate Theological Union, she has been a recipient of artist and writing residencies at Artsmith, Caldera, Into the Depths of Winter, and Soapstone. Crow Feathers, Red Ochre, Green Tea, her first book of poems, was a winner of the Wild Earth Poetry Prize, Hiraeth Press. Snowy Owls, Egrets and Unexpected Graces (initially published by Hiraeth Press and currently published by Homebound Publications) is a Nautilus Gold Winner in Poetry and a Foreword Review Indies Book of the Year Finalist in the Nature Category. Her poems have appeared in: Calyx, Kalliope, Mudfish, Tributaries: A Journal of Nature Writing, Wayfarer, Written River as well as The Cancer Poetry Project 2, and other anthologies, blogs and literary journals.  She is the Clark County Poet Laureate 2018-2020 in Washington State. Gwendolyn and Judy A. Rose, her spouse, share their home and creekside walks with Naomi, a rescued Cardigan Corgi & Chesapeake Retriever mix.