At the beginning of the year, I shared that the Lord nudged me to invest more in poetry. One step was to self-publish a book of poems, The Wind and the Shadows. Prayerfully, I have taken other steps this year, including submitting poems to journals. I have submitted to four journals so far, and I’m grateful that Better than Starbucks has agreed to publish one of my poems in their November issue.

Getting published made me realize I have no online presence as a poet. I decided I should at least have something basic so that people can find my poetry if they want to. After all, if I wanted to find someone’s poetry, the first thing I would do is a Google search. Go figure 😉

To that end, I set up another blog site focused on poetry: A Wandering Minstrel. The name was inspired by medieval performers who wandered about reciting poems or singing songs.

If you’ve enjoyed any of the poems I’ve posted on The Voice of One, I hope you’ll check out A Wandering Minstrel. Given The Voice of One’s focus on Christ, I only post religious-themed poems here. But the poems I read and write cover a much broader swath of topics, something A Wandering Minstrel will feature.

Being more intentional about poetry has been an unexpected journey, spiritually. I am working on my second book, Event Horizon, which I hope to self-publish in late 2021 or early 2022. In the introduction, I talk about God moving me to focus more on poetry and ask the question, “Why would God care about poetry?” My answer is that God cares about everything, and that we’re the ones who build fences between the holy and the common. By pursuing poetry, I find I am wandering after God as He walks out of the box I prepared for Him. It turns out God doesn’t think much of our boxes. Case in point, after His resurrection, Jesus just dispensed with doors and passed through walls 😉

I pray that the Lord keeps walking out of our boxes and through our walls. He wouldn’t be much of a God if He didn’t 😉