This is the fourth episode of the Nature, Wilderness and Wildness series of the podcast.

Lucille Clifton was born in 1936 in Depew, New York, and died in 2010. She served as Poet Laureate of Maryland from 1979 to 1985, was twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and won the National Book Award for Blessing the Boats in 2000.

Clifton’s style was a minimalist one — without standard capitalization or punctuation — but if that was a rebellion of sorts (she was in her 30s by the time of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s — it also gave her poems a rawness and power.

“breaklight” comes from her 1974 collection An Ordinary Woman, a collection that explored identity, both as woman and poet.

⁠⁠⁠Find out more about Lucille Clifton’s life and work here.⁠⁠⁠

Shane’s new professional service is Strong Words, which helps businesses, organizations and leaders all around the world find the right words to communicate their mission, their vision, and their impact.

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