Frances Ward photographer.
Welcome to SpiritBookWord, a website dedicated to my work as a poet and essayist. In these electronic pages, you will samples of my poems and essays alongside thoughts on art and spirituality.
Born in Belfast in the north of Ireland and educated at McMaster University (MA in English literature), I live in Hamilton with my wife Cheryl and dog Sophia. I currently blog for InRetro Studios - Everything in Retrospect and write poems and essays for New Explorations: Studies in Culture and Communication.
Critical Comment
- New York City's Richard Kostelanetz in Outlook: Canada's Progressive Jewish Magazine: "Porter is a fluent and engaging writer, often aphoristic, who takes pride in staking unfamiliar intellectual territory."
- Keith Garebian in The Globe and Mail February 23, 2002 says this about my approach to spirit, books and words:"Intimacy in J.S. Porter's essays on literature and spirituality is of a different sort. The author treats books as if they were living, breathing worlds... Porter's fine critical mind is clearly felt in his elegant inquiry into the subtle places where word and spirit meet ..."
- Patricia Morley, "Irish by birth, and a passionate reader by nature, Porter begins by apologizing for violating" silence. He describes his talk as small, strange, and obedient: "Light as a David Milne brush stroke." Porter calls the words that have inspired him "charged with spirit," and his method as one that searches for "birth-words," defined as magical words that give life to literature." Spirit Book Word: An Inquiry into Literature and Spirituality · Canadian Book Review Annual Online (utoronto.ca)
- J.S. Porter is our most generous, elegant essayist. He is also one of our very best critics. Wisdom, perception, humour, wide reading, passion, quirky intelligence, a love of style - he has it all. " B.W. Powe
Online Work
- InRetro Studios Blog
- Dialogue2.ca
- From New Explorations: Love in the time of COVID: Thoughts on BW Powe's Mysteria.
- Érudit
- From Conversations.org: The Divine and Embodied Feminine: A Dialogue, by Susan McCaslin, JS Porter
Writing on Canadian Authors
- "Atwood teases, probes, tickles, punches and enlightens...a writer who has scratched her name on the tablet of the English language. She belongs to the world
- "Moving Targets is a surprise box...you get humour...you get bite...you get lines of perfect pitch and tone" -Globe and Mail
- Alberto in Storyland - The Globe and Mail - October 20, 2007.
- Poets as proseurs - The Globe and Mail, August 18, 2007.
- Only Interconnect - The Globe and Mail, February 18, 2006.
- Catherine Tekakwitha and Beautiful Losers, at the Leonard Cohen Forum.
- Requiem for a Suicidal Genius, at Gordon Sheppard's website.
- The Last Interview: Gordon Sheppard in conversation with J.S. Porter, at Hamilton Arts and Letters.
- Poet Questionnaire #4: Paul Lisson answering Stan Rogal (with an essay by J.S. Porter, at Periodicity.
Older Links
- Late Talk on Air, With Nancy Duffy.
- Catherine Tekakwitha and Beautiful Losers. at the Leonard Cohen Forum
- Requiem for a Suicidal Genius, at Gordon Sheppard's website...
- The Last Interview: Gordon Sheppard in conversation with J.S. Porter, at Hamilton Arts and Letters...
- The Merton Journal - Earlier Editions.
- Thomas Merton and Adolf Eichmann, Advent 2007
- Notes on Robert Lax
- Robert Lax on Thomas Merton, Easter 2011
- Shakespeare in Politics, Hamilton Spectator, August 29, 2018.
- Intimate Details, a column for Dialogue Magazine.
- The Divine and Embodied Feminine: A Dialogue, by Susan McCaslin, JS Porter (From Conversations.org)
- A Canadian visionary: a new book digs into the influences on Grant's thought.
J.S. Porter's Latest Book, With Susan McCaslin: Superabundantly Alive: Thomas Merton's Dance with the Feminine
Superabundantly Alive: Thomas Merton's Dance with the Feminine is a unique, unified, multi-genre work that includes dialogue, imaginary letters, poems, and reflective essays by two established Canadian poets. Taking cues from Merton himself, Susan McCaslin and John Porter establish a playful, jazzy, dialogic tone - superabundantly alive. This book invites participation for those who already know Merton's work and for those who are meeting this whole and broken, prophetic, whimsical, paradoxical prophet and visionary for the first time.
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