Everything Bright, Clear, and Beautiful: A Year of Poetry

On March 20, 2020, Rachel Devenish Ford started writing a poem a day, and she continued with this practice for an entire year. Her poetry is a gentle response to each day, like an answer in a conversation. Each one is a small, contained thing, translating world events, family events, or insect life into something a little easier to see, to love.

The poems are loose, dreamy, and tidal. Read sequentially, they give a picture of one woman’s life during a global pandemic. They read like a landscape, rising and falling in words and tone, like the ocean, like music. They are welcoming and expansive, a meal you have been invited to eat.

Devenish Ford's poetry has themes of womanhood, life in her home in Thailand, prayers and spirituality, world events and racial justice, motherhood, and a strong love of beauty like a thread that moves through her words. These poems will be familiar because of their humanity, and their welcome feels like home.