We are all a little broken.
I am repaired with sunshine.
Poetry Meditations Essays
We are all a little broken.
I am repaired with sunshine.
About Peter
Experience and Expertise
I am a poet, explorer, and lover. I tend to wander the planet, and return home with stories to tell. My careers have included business, the public service, and as a strategic consultant and university instructor. I turned my passions to writing in 2022 and have published 8 books. My inspiration comes from travel, community, family, my love, and the beauty that nature and humans can create together.
Artistic Approach
I describe my writing as disciplined wandering. The practice of writing for me is a combination of inspiration and dedicated time. It started with writing a weekly meditation to ground myself and observe what enters my mind. When I travel, I write notes about each day, what I have seen, and how I feel. Poetry is a daily affair. I take a moment each day to observe what thread of an idea is crossing my point of view. I grab the thread and pull. From this tumbles ideas and thoughts that I try to capture.
Helping Out with Your Projects
While much of my time is engaged in exploring and writing, I do receive requests to help with consulting, training, and public speaking. My experience has focused on strategy, knowledge mobilization, thinking skills, creativity, and complex problem solving. I continue to manage a bespoke portfolio of clients and would be happy to speak to you about your organization. Please, do not hesitate to reach out.
Peter's Books
The Grout Between the Tiles
Poems for a Persian Princess
The Grout Between the Tiles
Keeping it Together
I love movies. Not all movies but many. I have a particular fondness for movies with a rogue main character who does the right thing despite having desires that would take him (or her) elsewhere. (Think Casablanca.)
What really fascinates me about movie production is that the stars are what everyone focuses on but when the credits roll by, there are dozens of names. Most of these people would never be recognized walking on the streets of Hollywood, New York, Mumbai, or Montreal.
They are the grout that holds the whole thing together.
The Light Green of Spring
Poems for a Persian Princess
The Grout Between the Tiles
The Burst of Spring
I live in a region of Canada with a semi-continental climate. This means we have a warm, humid summer and a very cold winter. By cold, I really mean severe. The type of cold that freezes any moisture from my breath so that ice forms on my beard and icicles grow off my eyelashes. Despite this, winter can be beautiful, even magical when it chooses to be. When the sky is bright, the snow reflecting the low-hung light, icicles dripping onto sheets of translucent ice, it feels like a movie that I get to play in. Winter is however, not my favourite season. Winter can be astoundingly mean and shows very little mercy to creatures who have not prepared for her wrath.
Poems for a Persian Princess
Poems for a Persian Princess
Poems for a Persian Princess
One Conversation
“I like your writing”, she wrote.
“Thank you. That is kind of you to say. Nice meeting you.” I replied, smiling and feeling like maybe the world is pretty good after all.
Sometimes a love affair starts with a little flash of kindness. This one did. Hundreds of hours and thousands of words passed before we stated the obvious. “There is something here, isn’t there?”
Indeed, there is something here and thus the conversation continued while we both traveled all over the world. One conversation between Turkey and Croatia. Another between Malta and Kosovo. Were you in Moldova or Denmark? Delayed messages because satellite Wi-Fi can be spotty while going through a tropical storm on an 88,500 gross ton ship.
Swimming in Maple Syrup
Tossing Pebbles Along the Shoreline
Poems for a Persian Princess
Good Fortune
It was my good fortune to be born in Canada. It was just luck. Fate if you wish. My birthday is even on the same date as we celebrate the founding of the country, July 1st. Fireworks and parades on my birthday are always a treat.
I love this place but I am not naïve about it. Much of the mythology of Canada is a fiction of Colonial powers that engaged in war and genocidal acts on the native populations that lived here before and after my ancestors showed up in 1672. I think we should all read the report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It opened my eyes, mind, and heart.
Shopping Through Dirty Windows
Tossing Pebbles Along the Shoreline
Tossing Pebbles Along the Shoreline
Respect is Not Hard Work
I respect people who work hard to feed their families. Often their own dreams have been put aside. Not because their dreams are not important to them but because their families are more so.
Much of the work I have done after I turned 30 has been high profile, clean, and well paid but not always. Some of the mind-numbing and soul-stealing work I have done includes include what we used to call Joe-jobs. Working in sales at a failing company. Picking weeds around hospital grounds. Digging out the cracked foundations of houses built on clay that shifted, to be patched and sealed. Digging trenches in the Army and marching for hours in the hot July sun, in anticipation that someone attacks Canada. Calling people at dinner time to ask them stupid questions for some client’s poll.
Tossing Pebbles Along the Shoreline
Tossing Pebbles Along the Shoreline
Tossing Pebbles Along the Shoreline
Becoming a Poet
I didn’t plan on becoming a poet. Poetry fell on me.
Whenever I was “feeling” something but needed to move forward, jotting down a few lines always felt like opening the valve on a pressurized container. I played with poetry for years until 2019 when my life imploded, one piece after another.
I’m describing this not because I am seeking sympathy. I am good. Really. A combination of therapy, family, friends, and what I refer to as re-wire-ment all have led me to this place of feeling joy and lightness, even when the burden is actually quite heavy.
The Wisdom of Shepherds
The Wisdom of Shepherds
The Wisdom of Shepherds
A collection of poems and weekly meditations by Peter Norman Levesque. Following the sudden death of my wife in 2019, writing became a way to process grief. In the writing process emerged joy and an honest facing of how to be in the world. The emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic only amplified these feelings that writing is an expression of the place where the mind, body, and soul meet. Since starting, my practice or writing has grown into a daily seeing of threads that I pull and reveal something - sometimes profound, sometimes banal - but always appreciated.
One Little Spark
The Wisdom of Shepherds
The Wisdom of Shepherds
This is a "spark" of poetry written by two men who care deeply about their families, communities, and societies.From the introduction: Harry and I were walking up Thomas Street in Key West, Florida. We had meandered off the planned path towards the Hemingway House on Whitehead Street. It was both the music coming from the back and the Dog Entrance sign on the front that attracted us to Blue Heaven.It was about 10:30 in the morning and while we felt that drinking beer and listening to music was a possibility, we decided to simply look around. Inside the little gift shop, I was attracted to the books of poetry on a shelf in the corner. “We could write something like this.” I said to Harry, who nodded and thumbed through a slender volume of verses by Cas Still titled: I Had to Hear it Said.Sitting in rocking chairs outside a store selling Key Lime Pie on a Stick on Duval Street, we began talking about what we would want to write.
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Peter Norman Levesque
