Ellyn Peirson has 4 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 3 narrators, with an average listener rating of 3★ across 1 ratings. The most-rated is Orchids and Neurons.
Orchids and Neurons
Summary
We live on a planet that is a thin place - a place where time and light continually intersect. And yet we are taught to experience life as thick. When we move intentionally through the thickness that surrounds us and perceive light, we can begin to punch peep-holes into and through time. I, as poet, live a solitary 4-P journey with the partners of prose, poetry, photography, and prayer. In my journey of time and light, I’ve learned that I can free myself from the ballast of ordinary time and soar in the light. This is time travel for me. The most redemptive partner of my four is poetry. The process seizes me, and I become consumed by the emerging poem until it is complete. Poetry and prayer are closely related, at times with a loss of boundaries. I have written poetry since I was an eight year old girl on the Canadian prairies. I simply cannot imagine life without poetry. Orchids and Neurons is an exploration of poetry as molecular and metaphysical, as highly musically-patterned and ontological. The poet is a simply a medium used in a complex process. In this recent body of work, may you discern my process and see yours.
©2018 Ellyn Peirson (P)2019 Ellyn Peirson
After the Interlude
Summary
After the Interlude explores destiny, the sibling relationship, the impact on destiny of family of origin dynamics, where we were before we were born, where we’re going after we’ve left the planet, thin places, dreams, prayer, and the importance of unbending intent. The book tackles purpose and the most difficult personal question of all personal questions — why? After the Interlude converses with existence. After the Interlude is an expression of an everyperson. All human beings know fear. All human beings lose family members. All human beings question. All human beings are wounded and flawed. And, above all, all human beings come with a destiny to be uncovered and lived and a monumental capacity to love. The wounds that happen along the way are part of the contract we undertake in coming here, trailing our own Wordsworthian clouds of glory. Whether we come once or multiple times is a moot point. The point of life, according to After the Interlude, is now and what we do with all the nows of our lives. After the Interlude is highly personal and yet it will touch listeners in their personal beliefs and fears. With references to the Platonic philosophers, Julian of Norwich, Emily Dickinson, William Blake, C. S. Lewis, Annie Dillard, Mary Oliver and Chet Raymo, the argument that the purpose of life is the advancement of the soul is brought home. And it’s brought home with an openness that allows the listener to try it on for size, rather than insisting on adoption or rejection. And, above all, After the Interlude faces death head-on. Ellyn Peirson’s credo on the soul’s journey is a personal culmination of years of exploration of the soul. Andrew Ruhl, Ellyn’s soul-friend, responds to and frames the theories and propositions in words and photography. It all began simply enough. The question was rather ordinary. Margaret, Ellyn’s only sibling and soul-companion of longest standing, had just died. Andrew, in his fourth post-bone-marrow-transplant year, wondered via email what the experience of Margaret’s actual death — her process of leave-taking — had revealed to Ellyn. Because of their familiar journey into the territory of Andrew’s leukemia, its treatments and effects, Andrew and Ellyn communicated easily about such matters. While the sharing during the process of Margaret’s death was soothing for Ellyn, Andrew’s question the morning of Margaret’s death was different, unanswerable in a sense, and Ellyn tucked it away in her computer. She’d reply soon. “What was her death like?” Andrew wondered. “What did you see and understand?” Simple enough…but in the paradoxical way that life and death can shift paradigms and relationships, the question became a holy grail. Pondering, strategizing, mentally rehearsing, Ellyn spent two months traipsing the question’s circumference. How does one begin to give words to the sanctity of grief and gratitude, to the observation of a death, to the exit of a huge soul? This critical task seemed to be a beginning without a beginning. Weary of coughing and sniffing from what she called her grief colds, Ellyn carved out a short weekend in early May to retreat to her cottage…to rest and to address the essence of Andrew’s quest. The floodgates opened...in dreams and writing. Over the next seven months of 2006, After the Interlude wrote itself. As each chapter was complete, Ellyn sent it off to Andrew. Andrew embraced each experience and commented, sometimes with his own word-sketches and sometimes with photography. Much of the writing occurred at Spindrift, the cottage that dominates the landscape of After the Interlude.
©2012 Ellyn Peirson (P)2020 Ellyn Peirson
Mudlarks and Meadowlarks
Summary
This story, highly fabricated though is, is written around my childhood understanding of a significant, singular incident in the life of my paternal grandfather. Because of my grandfather’s life in London, on the Canadian prairies and in Toronto, I am here and writing this story about an unsung hero, a most ordinary man. I dedicate this book to him, Harry Westley, a mudlark of sorts who loved meadowlarks...and to the memory of his son, my father, Frank.
©2016 Ellyn Peirson (P)2020 Ellyn Peirson
Antonia of Venice
Summary
Very few knew Antonia, despite her fame as La Stella di Venezia. In decadent 18th century Venice, she develops from Vivaldi’s star pupil into his musical colleague and the pride of Venetian music. After falling in love with Orlando Sagredo - master planner of the Palio - Antonia recognizes the emotional bondage she has never questioned. Antonia of Venice is inhabited by brilliant musicians, avaricious politicians, and ineffectual rulers of the Republic. Through it all, the people and music Antonia loves take the listener into the depths of revenge and selflessness, as the story advances the timeless, feminine heroic as a powerful and equal partner to the masculine.
©2014 Ellyn Peirson (P)2020 Ellyn Peirson