John Terpstra
John Terpstra’s most recent work of poetry is called Mischief (Gaspereau Press 2017). An earlier work, Brilliant Falls (Gaspereau Press 2013) was shortlisted for the League of Canadian Poets Raymond Souster Award. His latest non-fiction work is The House With the Parapet Wall (Gaspereau 2014). His previous non-fiction work, The Boys, or, Waiting for the Electrician’s Daughter (Gaspereau 2005), was short listed for both the RBC Taylor Prize and the BC Award for Canadian Non-fiction. He has won the CBC Radio Literary Prize for Poetry, the Bressani Prize, and several Arts Hamilton Book Awards for both poetry and non-fiction.
Bio last updated April 28th, 2019.
Articles by John Terpstra
Hands That Craft The Cross
By John Terpstra
March 21, 2018
Poet and cabinetmaker John Terpstra reflects on the Lenten experience of hand making a Cross for the church where he worships, and writing a cycle of poems on Christ’s journey to Calvary.
For isn’t the wooden Cross of our Christian faith a result of what we as humans have done? And where would I find such a tree? In a place where trees are cultivated, that is, a garden, an orchard If I were suffering like Jesus in the garden in the first poem (though my suffering was not over my own imminent death but that of the orchard), then I was also his friend and follower Peter, wanting to do damage, to slice off the ear of the man who was driving the bulldozer that was busily pushing over and uprooting the trees in the second poem, which became the second station, The Betrayal of Judas I was Judas himself, implicated and guilty in the death, when I accepted money for the Cross-finding project, and even more so when I put Swede saw to the trunk of the tree that had the shape I sought