If I Were God: Poems for People Who Don't Read Poetry

If I Were God is a collection of accessible poetry and prose. Taking her cue from cookbook authors like Yotam Ottolenghi who introduce recipes with personal vignettes, Genevieve Chornenki presents her poems with short lead-ins. In language that is musical but never mystifying, she explains what inspired each poem and alerts readers to sound patterns and poetic forms. She points out role models like W.H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Frost, and Phillip Larkin whose works remain accessible to people from all walks of life.

Genevieve takes the pretentiousness right out of poetry.

-Chris Swail, Life & Health Coach

Genevieve welcomes avid readers who shy away from poetry because they find it baffling or opaque. Her poems reach for the power we all long for in today's confounding world. She dares to address public figures like Meng Wanzhou and Vladimir Putin, and weighs in on contemporary issues from ambient city noise to farrowing crates, from the failings of the great I AM to the hubris of modern obituaries.

Reading Genevieve's work appeals to my ego and makes me feel much smarter than I am.

-Kelley Korbin, Communications Strategist

Genevieve's poetry-lyrical, other-worldly, and transformational-is, above all else, accessible to readers.

-Cheryl Gaster, Human Rights Mediator & Retired Lawyer

Genevieve's visually vivid poetry engages me the way films do.

-Yuanda Zheng, Literacy & Numeracy Educator

I haven't read poetry since university and enjoyed finding the muscles again.

-Ian Taylor, Payments Executive

The poems in If I Were God conjure equal amounts of wonder and woe, traversing the human condition. We are cicadas, Genevieve suggests, creatures who mature from darkness to light.

We sightless ones drawing root sap

thirteen years or more,

waxen and white in silent slots,

pinioned by demands of the day

-diapers and dubious careers

memos and deadlines-

now moult and creep to the light.

Not to mate and die-such waste!

but for our ravenous eyes

and the songs they stir.

Not for the praise of peers

or those curious ears

straining to gauge our heft

nor the worry of success,

the journal acceptance, the publisher's yes.

But for the rough touch of bark

the set of our wings

the scent of coming rain

a belly full of air.