A dreamlike collection of poetry that intertwines an embodied experience of the natural world with mythology, memory, and the creative process

Woven together from fragments collected in notebooks and dream journals over two decades of introspection, Dog and Moon inhabits a space of sleeplessness, enveloped in the darkness of night. Kelly Shepherd draws inspiration from the free-verse ghazal but takes the form and bends it, introducing couplets that recur and echo across his poems. They are a series of juxtapositions: nature writing placed in conversation with the language of poetry workshops, mythology and childhood memories, and sensorial encounters with the natural world colliding with images of home and belonging.

My ribs, the mattress’s ribs—I can’t sleep. This is a war,
says the newscaster reporting on the winter storm.
A war with Mother Nature.
When a metaphor is taken too far it becomes a projectile.
Try to talk to someone when they’re snoring:
their responses are all the same. The mind races.
Happiness is only a purchase away,
but what happens when the box store runs out of boxes?
Time moves differently depending on your bedsprings.
From a net of clouds, the moon:
so much of writing is trying to remember
your thoughts from other states of consciousness.
An inexplicable need to follow
the pathways of unseeable sparks and insects in the blankets.

Kelly Shepherd is an active writer and performer. He has been part of numerous poetry reading events including creative collaborations with other writers, musicians, and visual artists; has had participation in The Rasp and the Wine reading series in Edmonton, the Spoken Word on the Move series in Kelowna, and the Raving Poets series in Edmonton.He has been a kindergarten teacher in South Korea and a construction worker in northern Alberta. He has a Religious Studies MA from the University of Alberta, with a thesis on sacred geography, and an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC Okanagan. He has written five poetry chapbooks: The First Metaphor (2014), Fort McMurray Tricksters (2014), if one petal falls (2012), the bony world (2010), and Circumambulations (2003); his writing has been published in numerous journals including The Goose, The Coastal Spectator, Lemon Hound, and Geist. He is also a poetry editor for the environmental philosophy journal The Trumpeter. Originally from Smithers, British Columbia, Kelly currently lives and teaches in Edmonton.

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“Kelly Shepherd asks us ‘to experience the world: in our own bodies,’ then gives us the poems to do so.” —Cornelia Hoogland, author of Cosmic Bowling

“Dextrous, vivid, and wild work.” —Nancy Holmes

“These glowing, mesmeric prayers to the unknown in human consciousness, the body, and the natural world are entirely, uniquely alive.” —Russell Thornton, author of The White Light Tomorrow