Beth Wood is an award-winning poet and singer-songwriter who has toured the country playing music and delighting audiences for over twenty years. While performing, writing, creating, and collaborating non-stop, Beth has released eleven independent albums, two collaboration albums, two books of poetry, and one book of silly essays about ridiculous merch table conversations. Joy is the currency that runs through Beth’s work through story and song, and her sensitive, intuitive nature allows her to address both joy and sorrow in a way that resonates and moves audiences and readers. Beth’s work has expanded to include teaching and song coaching as well as leading workshops at festivals, songwriting retreats and beyond. Beth believes that engagement in the process of creation is as important as its outcome, and that there are no wrong notes. Beth is a winner of the prestigious Kerrville Folk Festival New Folk Award, and her poetry book Ladder to the Light was a finalist for the 2019 Oregon Book Awards Stafford/Hall Award for Poetry and is the winner of the 2019 Oregon Book Award Peoples’ Choice Award.
Corgi at the Park
Yes, there is despair.
There is cruelty beyond
all imagining. There is fire,
flood. Flying bullets, tyrants,
hearts tangled in nettles of
bramble, barbed wire, thorn.
There is uncertainty, shame,
wounded pride, shedding
of skin, walking thousands
of dust covered miles just to
take back your own name.
But there is a corgi at the
park with a wheelchair
chasing a red bouncing ball,
and that alone is enough
to keep on going.
