See some sample pages from this book
Walking Our Story is a collection of much-used and favourite poems from Joy Mead. Many of them have been selected by the author’s readers and friends, who ask ‘Where can I find … ?’ when they want a poem for a special occasion. Other poems tell of a path in poetry shared with people the author knows and loves, as well as strangers. Not a path to follow but a path made by walking – a kind of pilgrimage.
And there are new poems too … the walk, the story, the poetry go on …
See how they come:
bare feet on the warm earth,
disturbing the dust of ages,
to the telling place
where the joy of birth
and beginnings is shared
and the colours
of hope imagined:
  for every baby born, a star
  for all life on earth, Â
  a story and a promise.
(From A parable of being)
Joy Mead is a member of the Iona Community and the author of several books including The One Loaf, Making Peace in Practice and Poetry, Where are the Altars?, Words and Wonderings, A Way of Knowing and Glimpsed in Passing, all published by Wild Goose Publications. She has been involved in development education and justice and peace work and occasionally leads creative writing groups.
Joy Mead is a poet of great sensitivity and subtlety. She is a deeply religious poet, without being a Religious Poet, if you know what I mean. Genuine spirituality is located in the material, in the embodied: that seems to be how our God works. Joy Mead’s spirituality is grounded in the depths of so-called ‘ordinary’ life – the extraordinary life. That’s why she is one of my favourite poets.
Ron Ferguson, author and award-winning journalist