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In the hands of a master poet, words become pliable, syntax malleable, and imagery juxtaposed, concentrating the mind like a still forest pool into which a single pebble falls, the ripples resplendent with silence and understanding.<\/p>\n\n\n
Karen Shenfeld has been writing poetry and prose her whole adult life. With four books of published poetry, countless magazine articles and reviews, and three documentary films, Shenfeld has immersed herself in an art form that few dare to explore. Her poetry is compelling and provocative, alluring, and deeply touching. She delves thoroughly into the relationships of family, loved ones, and the astounding impressions she gathers from her extensive world travels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Growing up in an upper Bathurst neighborhood in Toronto, Shenfeld marvelled at the diversity of cultures and the variety of people that she intermingled with, a characteristic trait of many who later in life become itinerant travellers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From her earliest recollections, she fell in love with language and writing. \u201cI think I write about my childhood because that\u2019s intertwined with my Jewish identity and I guess the first poetry that I read was really at Hebrew school when we were reading the Old Testament. And I still find the language and cadence of the Old Testament to be of great beauty and of great power, and of great mystical resonance and transcendence.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Enamoured by the mystery of poetry and its power to communicate refined impressions directly, astonishingly, to a reader\u2019s inner sanctum, Shenfeld followed her passion to York University and studied with renowned Canadian poet Irving Layton. Layton was a \u201cthrilling teacher\u201d who espoused the philosophy that poets are prophets, heralded in ancient cultures as destined to be divine conduits and spokespersons, pointing toward some truth unseen or perhaps some sound unheard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A poet must find the skill to employ language\u2014ordinary words\u2014to speak directly to the heart, somehow bypassing so-called rational thought. It\u2019s almost as if the poet twists words into another dialect\u2014one that the Irish singer Van Morrison called \u201cthe inarticulate speech of the heart\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAs a poet, I tend to be like Wordsworth, I tend not to write about things right in the moment but rather about things recollected in tranquility, that can be transformed, in a way, by my imagination. I like for things to percolate and maybe, hopefully, write about things in a way that is more transcendent\u201d, says Shenfeld.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
William Wordsworth (7 April 1770 \u2013 23 April 1850) was an English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in poetry.
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