Ritenour English teacher Colette Love-Hilliard wrote a book centered around blackout poetry titled “Celestial Timpani,” a collection of blackout poems that are all about the stars.
“I witnessed the total solar eclipse, Northern Lights, and Comet ATLAS right in my own backyard last year,” Love-Hilliard said, “I hope the collection serves as a reminder that we are all connected by looking up.”
Love Hilliard got to experience all of those special events in nature, but says that the simple things also inspire most of the book.
“The night sky and the moon and the stars and everything have been around so much longer than us and seen all these cool things, so I just wanted to kind of honor nature and the way that I feel whenever I’m in nature,” Love-Hilliard said. “It always sort of calms me, like every single night, whenever I go out in my backyard, I look up and I can see the stars.”
This is Love Hilliard’s second book of poetry, her first one was titled “A Wonderful Catastrophe.”
“I am always making blackout poems in my spare time, so many of the pieces have been made over the course of several years, but when I really sat down to put this together, it took me about two weeks of really focused work,” Love-Hilliard said.
Love-Hilliard says this book is special to her because it’s about the human experience, and some of the artwork is in color this time, which is unusual for her. She wants to make more hybrid collections.
One of her poems creates a special connection to the natural world and how it connects to the human experience.
“There is one of my poems in my book, “Telegrams,” about how death leaves us these shiny telegrams to let us know that people are still watching over us,” Love-Hilliard said. “So I think about the people who I’ve loved and lost in my life whenever I look up at the stars,and so it calms me, and it makes me feel just more at peace.”
Love-Hilliard’s friend and fellow English teacher, Angela Huber gave her opinions about her friend’s accomplishments.
“I’m always excited when my best friend gets something published!” Huber said.
Huber states that Love-Hilliard is not finished, as she is always creating and adding to her creative collection.
“(Love-Hilliard) has a bunch of celestial-inspired poems that didn’t make the ebook, so we’ll hopefully see those published somewhere in the future,” Huber said.
When Huber read “Celestial Timpani” she was impressed by how Love-Hilliard can powerfully repurpose an existing text through erasure.
“Celestial Timpani highlights how we are all connected through star-shine and sunshine.” Huber says, “It’s beautifully done.”
Love-Hilliard’s main goal in this book was to think about how nature has connected humanity throughout all time.
“I was thinking about all the people that came before us, and what they saw and what our world would look like at that time. It caused me to think about all the people who’ve come before me and all the people who come after me and how we’re all kind of connected by these, these celestial bodies,” Love-Hilliard said. “They’re always there, and that kind of connects us, even though we’re only here for like a tiny moment.”
