from an interview with Pinhole Poetry, January 2025
Would you like to tell us a little bit more about your poem? For instance, how or why you wrote it, or perhaps provide some extra context?
Continue reading “Winter Solstice at Barrow—Utqiagvik”Silver Bow Publishing, December 2025
Hawking the Surf is an invitation to wholeness, art in every breath. In wordsmithing wizardry from earth to sea, Hayes steers us through heavy storms, her call for compassion permeating as we battle mortality in the search for meaning. She evokes universal knowing, every leaf and wave realms of intergenerational connection, literary traditions woven like DNA, all of it alive. With symbolism seeping through photos like “Bridging the White Water” and close ups of roses and dragonflies, musicality hooks readers, then transports them beyond words to mood and time, to that space within, that paradoxical connection with eternity in moments of peaceful presence. Poems like “How Do You Spell Joy?” and “Walk the Labyrinth” invoke reverence, to open to the unique flavor of now, while others like “Memory of Wonder” are perceptibly restorative. “I see you in the apple trees next to the gabled shed/ climbing, always reaching higher…/ Know I will be there in the flowers—/dahlias, hydrangeas, dianthus, pansies,” Hayes writes of loved ones looking on, then passes the torch to readers, “Your hand now holds this pen—/your poem forms the song./ Sing now, I am not far on the wind.” For every connoisseur of literature and every emerging writer seeking the way—if you only buy one book of poetry, this should be it.
–Cynthia Sharp, WIN Vancouver Poet Laureate & Award-winning Author of Ordinary Light & Rainforest in Russet (Silver Bow Publishing)
Imagine a meeting between Robert Frost and David Attenborough, and they make poetry together. Hawking the Surf is it; a masterpiece that takes the reader on a grand journey to the Western shores on the wings of butterflies. As you travel through the latitudes, share in the memories and dreams of the poet, you will undoubtedly be carried on as this reader was. This is a collection that you will want to read again and again, something not so common with poetry anymore. It is full of emotions, passions, and realities that are most relatable to all of us. Although you may never have traveled to those realms, you are certain to experience them as if you had. The author gives us access to an entire natural world, and we want to hug it with all our might, love it, and preserve it, however much pain we may have to endure as we do so. This is a winner written by one but made for all.
–Fabrice Poussin, Professor, Shorter University, Rome, Geogia U.S.A. and author of: Through the Lens of Solitude; Forgive Me For Dreaming; In Absentia; Half Past Life; and The Temptation of Silence
Looking for Cornelius, a novella by Diana Hayes
Secrets to be uncovered. A journey of familial discovery. A once-in-a lifetime trip. Looking for Cornelius by Diana Hayes is an epic, heart-forward adventure that’s not to be missed.
I received letters recently from Angela and George McWhirter after they read my newly published novella, “Looking for Cornelius.” I thought the book might conjure a memory or two of their own ancestors and homeland in Ireland. With their permission, I share their lovely letters:
Friends have asked how my novella began… 
I think that would be a story of its own, but it links closely to genealogy and my search for my paternal great-grandfather. I discovered cousins through Ancestry’s DNA program who were also direct descendants of Cornelius. They shared some dramatic narratives and a few photographs but none of us had a full picture of who he was and the tragedy that befell him, resulting in his death in Southwark, Central London. Some cousins called it a murder.
Continue reading “Looking for Cornelius – a novella”A LETTER FROM CATHY FORD, poet and fiction writer, publisher, editor, and teacher — on GOLD IN THE SHADOW
[photo of Cathy by Dwain Ruckle]
Without going too far into the places where many – myself, certainly – have honed our ideas about poetics, and books of poetry, and the various véhicules of the poetic voice, may I say 
this is the most beautiful book I have yet held in my hands. You may know, since we have shared a marvellous publisher, and much west coast sensibility through the years, that I have certainly seen and read some truly glorious books already. Including those so special due to their sheer simplicity in serving the poems, their margins, type, illustrations, their endsheets, their care and contribution to poetry, all attentiveness, especially poetry by Canadian women. Continue reading “GOLD IN THE SHADOW: Twenty-Two Ghazals and a Cento for Phyllis Webb”
Written as a mini-autobiography for Susan Musgrave’s “Imaginary Gardens” writing workshop, Nanoose Bay, August 17-20 2017
A sky I had never seen, a version of red in fact that does not fit into the spectrum of colour visible to the human eye. Far from cinnabar’s vermilion that appears on a clear evening at sunset on the western shore of a nameless beach, so very bright but soothing as a shawl worn by the woman with no worries or regrets, after a long meandering summer day. Continue reading “It all begins with the colour red…”
My Allium photographs, titled “Family Constellations”, are intended as a linked set and counterpoint to prairie realism. The ornamental Allium appeared in our garden this spring and became a representation for my family tree; photographed at varied stages of bloom and decline, in alternating light and shadow, sometimes mingling with stars and blue skies, shape shifting as my great-grandfather drifted in and out of my research and dreams.
“The music of steel came with ease and regularity in the life of the railways. You could hear it from miles away. You could see the puffs of smoke that accompanied the music. It happened at every crossing, at every bend in the road, at the approach of every town and hamlet along the way… Trains talk. The sweet music of the train whistle was surely a sign of the deep bond that existed between farm folk and train crews all over the west,” wrote my father, in his book about life on the Canadian Prairies, ‘Where Did You Come From?’ The railway was what linked families and farms and provided employment for many pioneers. It was an integral part of growing up in isolated prairie communities.
The Fulni-O Indians are only modestly known within and outside of Brazil. Prior to the European invasion, they were numbered in the hundreds of thousands and lived in the lush coastal lands near Recife. Those that survived fled several hundred miles to a semi-arid, drought-prone land. They now number about 6,000 and have lived on their current “reserve” of land for more than 500 years. Their name, Fulni-O means “people of the river and stones”.
