Council of Thunder

winner of the homebound poetry prize

Council of Thunder is a free-fall into what it takes to embrace this toxified, crumbling, stunning world. Exploring themes of eco-feminism, ecological kinship, heartbreak as initiation, and radical collective love, Toland shows us the ugly, the painful, the hurtful-and demands we love this world, "out of all worlds," anyway. The book's three-part arc moves with quiet intention through pathways of self-discovery and eco-awakening. Through sonic spells and grounded imagery, these poems offer us no neat healing, but a hard-earned turn toward aliveness, in its full color spectrum. A coming-of-age story set in this time of climate chaos and political dysfunction, these poems ask us to sit in council with the more-than-human, and weave ourselves more boldly and interdependently into the web of life.

“a song in service of mutual thriving”

“high-voltage”

“a reminder that we are inextricably interwoven”

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Advance Praise

“Show me one thing I am not,” writes Geneva Toland, a fierce acknowledgment of how deeply, how utterly we are connected to the messy and glorious all of it. Council of Thunder is a high-voltage, open-throated, raw-skinned celebration of loving the world, ourselves and each other—even when, especially when, it hurts. These are intelligent, unflinching heart songs deeply in touch with both the natural world and the full-spectrum of our humanness.

— Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, author of The Wonderment and host of The Poetic Path

Council of Thunder is a weaving of the heart’s secret storms and the soft songs of wild tongues woven by talons. If you try and separate them, like tangled roots, you lose the life of it. If you surrender to the knowing that they are inseparable, something old and true unveils itself. Toland skillfully guides us through poetic tracks in the ether, revealing hidden stories that speak to the human and entirely animal of us. To read this book is to read the aliveness of the wild, in all its aching hope and despair; a reminder that we are inextricably interwoven with everything.

**—Deer Ryder, author of The Dance of Moonwater & writer at The Honey Cave**

At once elegiac and defiantly joyful, Council of Thunder is a book about surviving change without surrendering wonder. Toland has written an urgent book that asks us to look closely at this wounded, miraculous world and, despite everything, choose it again. At a time like this, we are in need of this reminder.

—Romeo Oriogun, author of The Gathering of Bastards

Written with such gravity of intention, Toland treats listening to the calls towards change the world bestows upon her as downright miracles; whether receiving from the moon or from the cloud formation or from the oil rig, whether expressing to the notebook or to the beloved or to creatures of sky and sea and kingdom plantae alike. Knowing full well the impossibility of articulating ineffable experiences, Toland earnestly undertakes the task anyway, reaching out to her reader so we may approach the Unknown together, still afraid, perhaps, but hand in hand.

—Eleanore Tisch, author of Salad Box Poems & Water : Write : Wave

Geneva Toland’s Council of Thunder is a song in service of mutual thriving. Her speaker is daughter, granddaughter, lover—and moon, thunder, juniper, jackrabbit. This many-voiced collection reveals the ache of lingering endings, desire, and the persistent question, “have I done enough?” Attentive curiosity is the undercurrent of these poems, which offer counsel in uncertainty and sing the tender joy of connection in this precarious time. Toland invites us to love the world, this world, with nuance and grace.

**—Krissy Kludt, author of I Could Walk Forever and Know So Little and executive director of Writing the Wild**

Council of Thunder is an offering of hope: for a rebalancing of our human and social spheres with the ecologies within which we live, love, leave, and begin again. Through an exploration of varied forms and registers, Toland’s poetry embraces the uncertain thresholds of becoming, as the speaker meditates on what to leave (and how to leave) on her way to finding home. Imbued with a reverence for, and a rooted awareness of being held by, the land, plants, ancestors, animals (human and non-human), and personal and cultural histories, Council of Thunder is an honest and courageous reckoning: a love letter to the earth.

—Jennifer Elise Foerster, author of The Maybe-Bird