The COLOUR of WORDS
Bernice Lever's Poetry
Bernice, the poet, is fond of mountain-scapes and water scenes, family and friends. She is proud of her three children, two grandchildren and first great granddaughter. Her family stretches back to Europe, then Alberta pioneer grandparents, to parents working in BC, to the next three generations who are helping to create this "Mosaic of Canada".
Her Philosophy
Bernice, the creative writer, believes structure and form add clarity and creativity to our thoughts. Both music and message - even fun/pun - of words delight her. She is interested in idiomatic and/or conversational language rooted in the images of the 5 concrete senses to compress life's experiences and emotions to lyrics that illuminate.
Praise from other Poets
Never A Straight Line by Bernice Lever
No other Canadian poet writes with anything quite like Bernice Lever's combination of comic wit, irony (self-irony included), earthiness, delicacy, honesty, and desire. "Nature never drew with a ruler," she tells us, "nor a set square,/yet curves bind us closer..." and we know how right she is in what she says to us about our bewildering, intoxicating animal and spiritual worlds. We know how right she is, too, to "garage-sale" fears and go "kayaking to the river's end" -- all that's needed is a "waterproof heart." The poems in this collection are fresh and alive, they're genuine, and nothing less than a pure pleasure.
Russell Thornton - prize winning poet of North Vancouver, BC
Never A Straight Line has words, every curve of which you will want to touch. Bernice Lever's sensuality allies with sense, sense of humour and wisdom to create a palpable geography of body and mind we can all follow and learn of living on lovingly along the way: how to bury first grey hairs and tarnished silverware and in the paddle up the irreversible river, develop a waterproof heart. These poems are seductive and assertive, shy and trip-teasy, liquid and dry, a wonder bundle of opposites, as life is.
George McWhirter - Poet Laureate of the City of Vancouver, BC.
A Selection of Poems
Haiku
welcoming glances from multi-coloured eyes this pansy face
straight-backed prairie dog guards tire-flattened lover
HAVE YOU EVER
Have you ever thought that the blind have no colour prejudices, and the deaf care not for speeches, etc., but even lacking our five over-rated senses, you have the choice to hate or to love?
LEAVING
Burying first my grey hair and tarnished silverware, I will garage-sale my slimy green fears and red high heels. Kayaking to the rivers end, sloshing in noisy white foam, threading between boulders and dark mud shores, Paddling unevenly, slicing sky and horizon, then circling upstream for some weekends, all I need is syrupy moonshine and my waterproof heart.
BALANCED ECOLOGIST
I like things in balance, no waste, no excess, - one scoop of ice cream each - saving fuel and water, sharing beds, bathing together, Maybe your thing is collecting cardboard, aluminum or Saran Wrap to be converted, recycled - Okay,I didnt invent this world all this disposable garbage - But Im willing to eat capsule news releases printed on vitaminized breakfast paper, and return all my beer bottles, jam jars, plastic packages, and even myself for a refill of unpolluted air and water to wherever theyre being stored. Id like to believe that people could return each resource without changing it, Its just ---- or not.
FERRY ME
ferry me across keep me floating why ever reach the stoney shore, sandbars of anchor is all we need keep me rising, bobbing, cresting never ebbing, always riding you: Aflame
BEFORE WE WERE BORN
Oh, how we knew rough pounding of dads belly against our wet home as we nestled in moms womb Oh, how we knew sounds of curses and sighs yet felt warmth of unseen sun healing caresses of moms fingers We knew before pressuring tunnel before first air suck before cord-cutting final separation Oh, how we knew loves yin and yang.
PRAYER
I don't want to live everyday as the last day, grasping and clasping at disintegrating care like a fish leaping from an oil slick into our polluted air. Grant me the wisdom to live each day as the first day, shy in its newness strong in its promise.
My longest poem is eight pages, "Your Heart Attack Attacks My Heart".