At times apocalyptic and other times passionate and intimate, the poems in Eleonore Schönmaier’s Dust Blown Side of the Journey show the beauty of the lived and natural world in both wilderness and urban settings.

A woman hides her love letters in beehives, a cherry tree in full blossom is transported horizontally on a bike, and three crows tap their beaks on a metal door. A grandmother gestures how birds once flew in blue skies, public smiles are outlawed, and a shot-down jet lands in a field of wildflowers. Men from warm countries wear big coats and are falsely suspected of hiding bombs, an Indigenous man is forced by police into the trunk of a car, and a stork lands in prison under charges of espionage. In Canada, the northern village of Paradise is under evacuation orders, and in Europe Desmond Tutu steps down from a podium into a crowd of photographers. Over a Belgian lunch Frederic Rzewski talks about his piano concerto A Dog’s Life, and a Dutch dinner is shared with a young refugee boy who laughs joyously.

Reflecting a childhood in the northern Canadian boreal forest, combined with an adult life lived without borders, Eleonore Schönmaier’s vivid and sensual language invites the reader to fully join in and enjoy the journey.