Photo: Misha Bower @ Antler River Poetry Reading, London, ON (2025)
Poet—Writer, Teacher & Creative in Community
I am thrilled that my first book of poems, ROOT OF LIGHT, is now released into the world! Please take a look below, along with some video video-poems and other WRITING.
My first love is poetry, but also real-life stories. Some of my poems are featured in BROADSIDES, and personal stories, in my MUSINGS.
It’s also important for me to be a WRITER IN COMMUNITY — to nurture other writers through workshops, mentorship and readings.
Praise for Michelle Doege's Root of Light
Michelle Doege's collection shelters us like a beloved tree. Her poems are intimate, kind, precise, and make beautiful shapes on the page. Many draw her reader to consider how the shape of a tree can shape their own thinking about relationship, partnership, and the people who make up our homes, the places that give us our roots.
Heid E. Erdrich ~ award-winning poet, curator & teacher
A book-length love poem to Doege’s wife Vindu, Root of Light charts the journey of a twenty-five year relationship. Out of familial disruption and cultural difference—the “blue gods” of Vindu’s ancestry and the European “green” paganism of Doege’s Germanic ancestry— Doege’s poems nurture “a tangled web / of a world” that is both home and the desire for home, an ongoing work of love.
Sharon Thesen ~ renowned poet, essayist & teacher/mentor
I love this book by Michelle Doege! “Say beauty that splits your heart in two.” I love its fearless heart and its unapologetic heat! Home is truly everywhere and “Our entire life exists/ in one tree.” Read this book. Save your life. Save the earth.
Cary Waterman, poet, non-fiction writer & teacher/mentor
Other Publications & Video Poems
Story: “End of a Rainbow,” Caitlin Press (2017)
Featured & Poem: “Breathe,” Orange Lamphouse Studio (2022)
Chapbook: Broke Press (2023)
Poem: “Evacuation [Order]” (2022)
Video Poem: “Fields of Wheat,” Seedy Saturday - Farm Folk City Folk Conference (2021)