poetry

The presence of poetry has ebbed and flowed across John Paul's life. Having written poetry when he was younger, years of study and the pursuit of professionalism saw poetry writing fall by the wayside for two decades. It was in the presence of a former child-solider, a young poet rising, reciting an Eduardo Galeano poem in Nicaragua that John Paul let poetry back into his life. Since that moment, poetry for John Paul has flourished in both process and form as a source and expression of joy and awe, a vessel of questions and pain, a bridge between the personal and the universal. Much of his poetic practice centers around the traditional Japanese form of haiku, numerous of which feature in this gallery alongside poems gathered through personal and collective journeying into the indispensable, the regenerative, and the ineffable aspects of life.