Jenevieve Carlyn

@coastalpoet

Evie | "The greatest journey begins with a single hoofbeat.” Connecticut Poet Laureate Award for Ecopoetry. Poetry of the Sacred Prize. Palette Poetry Love and Eros Prize Finalist. Commended Mist & Mountain, Shortlist Artemesia Arts jenevievecarlyn.com

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Jenevieve Carlyn@coastalpoet· Jul 13

That's a wonderful idea. Photos of plants & such, too. Kyla, you're a gardener so you might appreciate this - I was so taken by this plant, I put it into a poem:

Euphorbia trigona rubra (African Milk Tree)

Euphorbia trigona rubra (African Milk Tree), here showing its crimson foliage, which is the shade it deepens into when it gets enough sunlight.

Close-up it reminds me of a dragon, dinosaur, or fish

Jenevieve Carlyn@coastalpoet· Jul 11

Glad I started a blog these past few weeks & plan to continue. Switching gears just a bit for the month ahead... Goals: Finish a few poetry films in progress. Print the 70+ poems on my desktop. Make time to read & write. Enjoy life! 🧡

Purple irises and other flowers in my aunt's garden. A birdhouse, wooden fence, and trees in the distance.

Jenevieve Carlyn@coastalpoet· Jul 8

It's interesting! I used to write for CT Historic Gardens, a consortium of 16 house museums & gardens. One of the homes has Lincrusta wallpaper throughout, though pattern & colors are different. (See below..) Do you mind if I mention your quest on my current blog, in the context of this CT museum:

Embossed wallpaper depicting a bird, butterflies, leaves, and rays of sun in warm gold

Jenevieve Carlyn@coastalpoet· Jul 8

The brand was founded in Sunbury-on-Thames in 1877, with a factory in France by 1880 and in Connecticut, USA, by 1883. The embossed wallpaper was used for palaces, on the Titanic, in the White House, and has featured in films... It was originally known as "washable linoleum"...

Lincrusta Wallpaper was also known as "washable linoleum"

Example of Lincrusta Wallpaper, also known as "washable linoleum"

Jenevieve Carlyn@coastalpoet· Jul 8

This looks like an exact match to me... Lincrusta Wallpaper, based on an Italian Renaissance design. The British company was founded in 1877.

Jenevieve Carlyn@coastalpoet· Jul 6

Well I didn't win but I came close! New announcement for 2025 prize (subs closed Dec). You'd have to know what the last two - or 20 - years were like to fully appreciate what this means to me. My poem will be published this summer. Thanks to all involved 🩷 Full list & winners: tinyurl.com/4n7r6hfx

"palette poetry 2025 Love & Eros Prize winners & finalists" on a swirling pink and black background

finalists for the 2025 Love & Eros Prize... a miracle!

Jenevieve Carlyn@coastalpoet· Jul 5

Our loved ones are always with us in spirit. You lived through this time with such grace. 🩶

The lobby window during the last morning at a hospice in January. The window is filled with stars and the words "always with us." Outside, there is snow on the ground, a bare tree, and the blue-gray ocean beyond.

Plants inside the lobby window at the hospice in January on a loved one's last morning. The window overlooks a peaceful sunlit ocean with snow on the ground and a bare tree in the distance.

Jenevieve Carlyn@coastalpoet· Jul 2

When the branch blocking your path *is* the path...

Small water garden pond with mountain laurel branches. A small stone lantern and gravel path on the far side.

Jenevieve Carlyn@coastalpoet· Jun 28

Chapbook journal: Hometown research for my next blog post. Prior to my family's arrival, but this ties into my recent poem about the islands. ⚓ Circa 1900, the contrast between summer homes built for NYC residents...& a multi-ethnic polyglot workforce at the local quarry, an economic anchor in town.

Victorian summer houses built along the coast and on the islands, late 1800s.

Workers standing on huge slabs of granite at the local quarry, early 1900s.

Jenevieve Carlyn@coastalpoet· Jun 26

My aunt's water garden.

Jenevieve Carlyn@coastalpoet· Jun 23

Bit of hometown glory... Story poem about our local ferryboat. People who live around here will recognize it. I told our host this week I'd try to write "a very small poem" and "not an epic." I think I landed somewhere in between? ⚓ 🏴‍☠️ #PromptCombo #Beaches @emteepoetry.bsky.social

Völsunga

Sun-burned city tourists venture
from the small beach and picnic canopies
to catch the ferryboat docked beside The Sea Mist,
awaiting captain's orders to depart for the harbor islands.

Enveloped by brine and petrol,
his voice overhead regales us with pirate lore,
legends of rogues and thieves in these quaint coves
buoying us upon the waves.

How odd it seems, we were enchanted
by seventeenth-century scoundrels plying the waters,
captured, accused of treason against the Crown,
executed on the gallows at Wapping Pier.

Time goes on burying the years.
The captain's sonorous voice sleeps with the fish now,
like seafarers of old.

The islands loom descant as before,
a rope ladder hanging from a precipice - its sheer drop
our own treacherous cliff to scale, imagining swashbuckling scenes in The Princess Bride.

A skull & bones flag still flies over High Island,
the Crow's Nest, built long ago for adventure, perches
in the eaves of a tree. All of this is child's play.

None of it feels familiar to me anymore,
but I still recognize everything.

Waves lap at the small beach. Tourists line the dock.
A new captain navigates the channel now.
Her turn, finally, at the helm.

Rocky outcropping of a few small islands in a cove and harbor, with trees and houses on the islands. The ocean is reflective, clear, and calm. Some sailboats in the middle distance, and the coastline in the far distance is heavily forested.

Jenevieve Carlyn@coastalpoet· Jun 17

When I first wrote & shared this poem years ago, I said: "This probably isn't a good recipe for living, unless you want to feel a bit dangerously alive. On the paradox of struggle & surrender." Still true! The sea is many things... 1/3🧵 #PromptCombo #Definition #PoemsAloud ⚓

Jenevieve Carlyn@coastalpoet· Jun 14

Chapbook journal: research day! Historic landmarks, family & social history. Digging into the archives to write the poem I've already mapped out, looking for the universal in the particular, and challenging myself to concision. Putting myself on the clock! But overall, I will not rush this process.

Black & white photograph of early 20th-century factory workers.

The thistle clock and the velvet clock, both ornate and showing the time around 2:30.

Jenevieve Carlyn@coastalpoet· Jun 8

*Drawn towards integrating historical & topical issues into my own poetry, is what I meant below. 🪶 Hopefully @fiftywords.bsky.social doesn't mind his books being referenced here, but his collections are compelling, especially if you're exploring your own process of writing poetry in this way. 1/🧵

Not Yet Ash, a poetry collection by Dermot Murphy, with a foreword by Liz Gillis. The cover depicts a flames in the lower right corner of the book giving rise to an ash and smoke-filled scene of a tea kettle, rubble, and and jacket left behind amidst the fire.

Foreword

The 1916 Easter Rising was, from very early on, called 'The Poets' Rebellion', yet of the sixteen men executed for their involvement, three were in fact poet's, Patrick Pearse, Thomas MacDonagh and Joseph Plunkett. They were also musicians, artists, trade unionists, radicals and human rights activists. Looking at this group of people, they continue to inspire their modern-day equivalents.

This seminal event in Irish history which led to the creation of the modern Irish state continues to inspire creativity, whether through art, literature, poetry, song, film or theatre.

Books are still being written about it thanks to the release of valuable records from state archives relating to the period.

And while we think we may know all there is to know about the main events of that week and the main protagonists, there is still so much to discover about the lesser-known figures, be they combatants, civilians, or relatives, many of whom left no records or spoke very little of their experiences.

The Decade of Centenaries provided the opportunity for the Easter Rising to be explored and interpreted not just by historians, but a whole spectrum of people, who, through their creativity shared their interpretation of the events of that week to audiences, old and new, far and wide. History is not just to be found in books; history can be explored in many ways as Dermot Murphy has shown in this publication.

Where historians and artists differ is that historians are limited to facts and evidence. Artists, while basing their

work on historical evidence are free to explore conversations that may have taken place, thoughts which may have been shared, emotions which may have been felt.

This is exactly what Dermot has done with his work. He brings us on an emotional journey through the imagined words of those who were left behind, the wives, mothers and families of those executed in 1916.

Dermot brings to the page words that may have been thought but never spoken out loud. The pain, loss, sorrow, frustration, pride and love that was felt for these men by their families as imagined through Dermot's words is heartbreaking. The leaders of the Easter Rising were not untouchable, bigger than life figures, they were ordinary people, who, due to time and circumstance, took part in extraordinary events. They were husbands, fathers, sons, brothers, friends. Through his poetry Dermot gives us an insight into the sacrifices that were made by those who were left behind. Above all he has put the human voice back into the narrative of those troubled times.

Liz Gillis
Historian

Jenevieve Carlyn@coastalpoet· Jun 7

Family stuff, ofc! I'm considering this an exercise in forward movement. The poem is about the lost sheep of the family. I'm currently visiting the house w/ the cedar chest & I'm very much at peace about it. But also, I can't ever go through this again. (Poem in Rites & Trials anthology, Dec 2025)

Equinox
Jenevieve Carlyn

Summoned, I open
the cedar chest and awake
the resin of a thousand trees,

breathe in unknown forests,
bury my hands in coarse wool,
cable knit, my memory of a pattern
of a lost fair isle, soft as a lamb's ear.

Spellbound to this ritual of remembering
and forgetting, the truth is an itchy sweater
I wrestle at putting on now and then —

in my heart, I know I will never
hear from you again. Still on my mind,
I turn you over and over like a magic eight ball,
"All signs point to yes," an empty affirmation

of what I have already come to accept,
the ambiguous loss of you, a slow realization
of remaining days spent in not-knowing,

the fleeting recognition of thistledown
floating away on a sunbeam.

(Poem in Rites & Trials anthology, Dec. 2025)

A lost sheep standing in a forest with a sunbeam shining through the trees.

Jenevieve Carlyn@coastalpoet· Jun 7

I think the hardest part of any real inner transformation is that, on a day to day level, it will often feel as if you aren't growing. Or you can't perceive it, as it's occurring at a glacial pace. This truly is the challenge - the grit in the oyster shell. To keep believing it will birth a pearl. 🦪

"Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it."

- Mary Oliver

Jenevieve Carlyn@coastalpoet· Jun 3

2/ as it makes me wonder what might've been. But, I did open the folder just now. All sorts of things: A photo of my grandmother, New Haven, CT, c. 1944. A birth certificate for my great-grandmother, Guiseppina, aka "Peppina" (the namesake of my one & only pet ❤️). My earliest ancestor born here.

My grandmother, Norma, sitting in a parlor in New Haven, Connecticut, circa 1944. We called her "Lily."

Birth certificate for my great-grandmother, Guiseppina Zita, my only 3rd generation ancestor to have been born here. The others were born outside the country and came later.

Jenevieve Carlyn@coastalpoet· Jun 1

Cloud study! 🌊🌊🌊

A gull stands on the sign, "Welcome to Hammonasset Beach," with sand dunes on either side of a path leading to the beach. The sky appears as a band of gold over the crystal blue sea, with a dense blanket of gray and cream clouds above.

A windy cloudscape with the sun piercing the horizon. Quiet beach with only a few people, and beach roses scrambling over the dunes in the foreground.

Jenevieve Carlyn@coastalpoet· Jun 1

Call & response cloudscape ⛅ The feathery gold clouds above are inquisitive, and the gray clouds below are the sentences given in reply.

Jenevieve Carlyn@coastalpoet· May 26

Yes, I'm worried about a few things! One thing in particular. These are from the cartoonist I mentioned the other day. Some bleak scenes, but in the end, we have poetry...

A grayscale cartoon by Michael Leunig in which planes drop bombs over a village, while a man in a suit stands on a cliff safely away from the destruction, saying to a small boy, "one day son, all of this will be yours"

A grim urban scene with hungry masses of people bleakly walking one way, while a sign reads: "Breakfast: Free-range eggs with organic stone-ground wholemeal toast, $12"

Cartoon by Michael Leunig

Full-color cartoon cartoon by Michael Leunig with text that reads:

"Mr. Curly transports wayfaring pilgrims away from the bad mood of the world to the peaceful shores of Lake Lacuna, a small, mystical and beautiful place of sanity which lies between the large, uncontrollable forces, the great powers, and the major issues. The little goat-drawn cart has been carved from a huge potato."

"Motoring News: Mr. Curly in his goat-assisted pedal car is asked by a police officer to blow into a tin whistle, whereupon it is discovered that he is driving under the influence of poetry. For this he gains ten merit points."

The cartoon by Michael Leunig shows a man in a red car, which is pulled by a friendly goat. A bird sits on the hood and on top of the car. Next to the driver's window, a police officer is holding a tin whistle. There is a dog in the back seat of the vehicle, and a flowering garden cart is hitched to back.

Jenevieve Carlyn@coastalpoet· May 24

Last fall & winter during my Bluesky hiatus, I quietly journaled on another platform for just a handful of family & friends. I also shared quiet audio poems there each night. I loved it. I stopped using the platform (for reasons) but I'm missing the outlet it offered. Feels like a lost puzzle piece.

Jenevieve Carlyn@coastalpoet· May 22

#PoemsAbout #BearingWitness America has never been one entity except in myth, and democracy has always been the great experiment imperfectly tried, but these are my thoughts on my country. For now it's the only one I have. This was in the Poems for Protest anthology from Rough Diamond last winter.

Democracy
Jenevieve Carlyn

America, what would it mean now
to go on without you?

You with your purple mountains
and amber waves,

me with my spacious skies
and shining sea—

all my unspoken credos,
all your valleys in between;

to say I never really knew you
would be the truth. And yet,

my heart is still a small dog
who waits without food or water

even beside the grave of the fallen—
the only war we're still learning to fight.

*Words in italics from 'America, the Beautiful' (1895)

The Grand Canyon and sky in shades of peach, mauve, and blue.

Jenevieve Carlyn@coastalpoet· May 9

Existential Poetry Society? 🪐 I was half-serious in mentioning this recently, but one poet jumped in right away. Thanks @johnchmura.bsky.social! Here's my poem on the theme of #Existence. I'm furthering the convo, but it's addressed outwardly to all. A mythopoetic response. #PoemsAloud Join us ✨

Jenevieve Carlyn@coastalpoet· May 7

1/3 🧵 For #PromptCombo, #InTheStyleOf my earlier recording of this poem, which I wrote & shared on twitter in May 2024. It was my first audio/video poem! I made a new video for it today, as it's in a literary journal this week.* I have many poems about rain, & this is one: 'Arrival'🌿🍃 #PoemsAloud

Jenevieve Carlyn@coastalpoet· May 4

Going off script! Sharing five #PoemsAloud by Emily Dickinson with a bluegrass twist. 🎶🎻 I will also share an original poem this week, but I thought this would be fun for #PromptCombo today, because it's so obviously #InTheStyleOf the 19th-century poet whose poems I'm reading here. #PoemsAloud 🪕

Jenevieve Carlyn@coastalpoet· May 1

A totem tree poem. I thought of this all week.

Coda

Perhaps to love is to learn
to walk through this world.
To learn to be silent
like the oak and the linden of the fable.
To learn to see.
Your glance scattered seeds.
It planted a tree.
I talk
because you shake its leaves.

Jenevieve Carlyn@coastalpoet· Apr 30

I don't always love wet weather and sometimes it's downright dangerous, but this 1921 poem by Langston Hughes describes a peaceful light rain. #PoemsAloud for the last day in April ☔

Jenevieve Carlyn@coastalpoet· Apr 29

Reading back on these posts in the context of having also just read Teresa of Ávila, and thinking that while there is definitely a sense of 'something greater, beyond oneself,' I couldn't say exactly to what I am being called right now, other than to the task of asking myself that exact question. ⚓

Mystery pawprints in the sand at the nearby beach, with gray pebbles and granite rocks.

Jenevieve Carlyn@coastalpoet· Apr 27

A #PoemsAloud for #PromptCombo #TotemTree w/ thanks to host @janpsolivagant.bsky.social. Translated by Dana Delibovi, this poem by St. Teresa of Ávila is a fascinating artifact regardless of religion but also has the specific element of the cross, one of history's most significant totem trees. cw:✝️

Dana Delibovi's book, Sweet Hunter: The Complete Poems of St. Teresa of Avila, a bilingual edition featuring Spanish poems and English translations, shown here by the sea in Connecticut. A mallard duck and Canada goose are almost visible in the cove on the left. The ocean is blue and calm, and there is a concrete breakwater extending into the sea from the left.

Jenevieve Carlyn@coastalpoet· Apr 27

Reading #PoemsAloud from a 16th-century mystic, translated by @danadelibovi.bsky.social in her book, Sweet Hunter: The Complete Poems of St. Teresa of Ávila ❤️‍🩹 Beyond its Catholic context, this poem is an artifact of its time. Audio ends w/ lines from her most famous poem, 'Let Nothing Disturb You'🪶