Worship, 2021.
"Worship" is a poem about the comfort that can be found in spiritual dissonance. In it, the speaker sits with her grandmother (a woman of deep and conflicted faith) and worries about whether that faith will get in the way of their loving relationship, even as the speaker is agnostic. But it's in this difference of age, spirituality, sexuality, and physical distance, that holiness is found, as the speaker reminisces on her journey to the grandmother's house, and her words. The willingness to love, find stillness in perpetuity, and the ability to see beauty in the ugly things is what a holy place is--a place that can foster peace.
Elodie
Townsend
B.A. English, 2021
| UC Berkeley
Literature
|
Elodie Townsend (she/they) studied English at UC Berkeley and graduated magna cum laude in 2021. Aside from poetry, she enjoys sports, punk music, and playing with her chihuahuas. She is a lifelong native of the Bay Area, and still resides in Berkeley.