Lodestars

(a poetic collaboration)

Note: I have declared 2026 as ‘the year of the Substack collaboration’. My hope for Waymarkers was never for it to be solely a pillar for my own writing, but also a platform to showcase other’s work too. And Substack provides a brilliant venue to meet other writers whom I admire, and find a creative way to collaborate with them.

So, to my regular readers, be ready for a few more posts this year which feature other writers alongside myself. The best part is that all of them are subscribed to Waymarkers, just like you should be…

Moonrise Over the Sea by Caspar David Friedrich, 1822

As many of you know, I love creating art-poems or ‘concrete’ poetry — poems which have a defined shape, forms which elevate the poem to new heights. Sadly, this type of poetry tends to be derided by the general public as too ‘artsy’ and by my fellow poets as ‘low-brow’. So it was a delight to find a kindred spirit here on Substack, when I chanced upon Dabney Baldridge’s fantastic work.

I’ve never before had the experience of meeting another writer working in such a similar vein. At times, reading Dabney’s poetry has been spooky because it feels like she’s drawing ideas directly from my own brain. It was clear that she and I needed to collab.

Below you’ll find two poems in conversation with each other, as we both created art-poems from the prompting phrase ‘stars as navigation’.

It’s clear we both used these poems as a launching point to further explore our metaphysical and religious beliefs. Please enjoy.

This art-poem takes the imagery of a ship on a starlit sea literally, and seeks to explore the feeling of being lost in frigid waters but seeking the lodestar that guides us to our destination.

Dabney’s poem is extraordinarily ambitious — a work of art pulling us in multiple directions, plunging into the darkness of a bleak existence and then illuminating us with the light of the best and brightest morning star:

I trust these poems will act as waymarkers to you (and maybe this post will encourage you to try collaborating with a writer you admire).