Alchemy of Headwinds, poems by John Macker

It's official, Alchemy of Headwinds (auxarczen 18) is out today!

John Macker's poems are a landscape of resilience, grief, solitude, and the long light of the Southwest. I am honored that one of my photographs graces the cover.

Find it, read it, reread it, share it. Let these poems keep you company in the wild open spaces.

The following videos by Jennifer Cartright Photography feature John Macker reading selections from Alchemy of Headwinds. Poetry is intended to be heard, live readings are where the poem takes flight.

BARRY LOPEZ

HUMMINGBIRD SABBATH

HUMORLESS LAWMAN

PROSPERO AND ARIEL

SIXTEEN DIRECTIONS TO MY HOUSE

Order your copy today at the following link. Many, many thanks!

https://www.auxarczen.com/portfolio-collections/my-portfolio/alchemy-of-headwinds

WHEN POEMS ARE BORN

Poetry isn't just something you read, it's something you must hear.

The shape of the poet's breath, the cadence, the way their voice leans into a word,

all of it carries meaning that ink alone can't recreate.

In this reading from Alchemy of Headwinds,

John Macker's elegy for Barry Lopez

becomes more than text on a page,

it becomes wind, memory, and music.

TURN UP THE VOLUME & LET IT HIT YOU

WHERE INK CAN'T REACH.

Come back to this spot next Tuesday for another installment of our series.

BARRY LOPEZ

Alchemy of Headwinds

The cover

This collection is John Macker's most urgent and unflinching collection to date. An elegiac roadmap scrawled on the wind, birdsong, and desert dust. In a voice shaped by over fifty years of poetic resistance and reverence, John chronicles five years of American unraveling with raw honesty and spiritual grit.

From the haunted stillness of pandemic solitude to the thunder of memory echoing across the mesas. In this work Macker writes elegies for friends, fellow writers, and endangered landscapes that have shaped his life. Alchemy of Headwinds is a literary reckoning it is both lament and a survival ritual.

These are poems that carry you across borders, down forgotten roads, and into the liminal light between dusk and truth. Rooted in the desert Southwest and reaching toward the universal, Macker's voice is that of a witness, a dissenter, a naturalist with dirty boots and a burning candle in his hands.

Tune back in every Tuesday and Thursday to hear John read selected poems from Alchemy of Headwinds. As poetry is a medium that is best enjoyed when read aloud, for it is song at its root and these little books serve as mere placeholders.

Coming soon