Renee Podunovich

Renee Podunovich Poems

Renee Podunovich Biography

Renee Podunovich is a licensed professional counselor, poet, author and freelance writer living in the southwest US Four Corners Region of Colorado. She has three chapbooks of poems: " Illustrious for Brief Moments" (Finishing Line Press,2021) , " Let the Scaffolding Collapse" (Finalist of the New Women's Voices Chapbook Competition by Finishing Line Press,2012) and " If There Is a Center No One Knows Where It Begins" (Art Juice Press,2008) . She is the 2019 Cantor Award winner awarded by the Telluride Literary Festival. Her poems were nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2010 and 2011. Her most recent publications include Literary Impulse, Scrittura, Journey of the Heart, The Mindful Word, Mississippi Review, Boston Literary Magazine, FutureCycle Poetry, Caper Literary Journal, White Whale Review, The View From Here, RATTLE and SW Colorado Arts Perspective. Her first book of poems " If There Is a Center No One Knows Where It Begins" was published by Art Juice Press in 2008. Writer Cynthia West said of the book, " Podunovich's visions are transparent panes allowing the reader the warmth and light of a larger view. She returns from journeys beyond the daily world with medicine which explodes in us ‘with no limits, other than the filter of our hearts'. Her passionate words form conduits through which we can meet our higher selves" . Renee believes that poetry is a language that encourages us to transcend our constricted sense of self and connect to our essential nature within and the spirit of the world around us. She is interested in poetry as a linguistic bridge between the numinous and our daily grind, a healing art form that can transport us into more profound personal knowing and more extensive global awareness. Renee facilitates poetry Well Writing: Wordcraft for Discovery, Wholeness & Connection workshops that are designed to use creative writing as a tool for centering, reflecting and for personal growth. @rpodswords at Medium & IG www.ReneePodunovichPoet.com)

The Best Poem Of Renee Podunovich

Heart Filter

There is light inside of every thing.

If I were a transparency,
a vapor, a mist, a pane of glass,
it would travel from its universal source
straight through me
and shine upon you.
You would feel its warmth.

The shine of the sun blazing, burning, glowing yellow
has journeyed all this way
travelling upon, yet contained within
space enormous and thick.
Travels a wide open course
until it is intercepted by the manifest world-
caught in the web of living things:
The filter of the branches of the Redwoods,
catches the light in its airy net
so that it reaches the ground in small patches-
as if these diffuse rays are just enough
for fern, shamrock and coastal jay,
as if this canopy protects us
from being utterly consumed by the searing
sun passion love fire whose combustion
warms us from the inside
and out,
whose effusion from source into matter
is a miniscule point
exploding with no limits
other than the filter of our hearts
and this canopy of silent leaves.

Light falls like snow
suspended in the air
reflected on droplets of mist
in filaments, figments, facets,
floating, flittering, flying,
hovers upon the breath of the ancient forest community-
a glimmering reflection of life before the last ice age,
its secret revealed in the pattern of this illumination,
every day writing the memoir of itself.

from 'If There is a Center, No One Knows Where It Begins', Art Juice Editions (2008) , first edition

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