JACK PHILLIPS is a poetry editor for Magpie. After a teaching and academic career that took him from Alaska’s Tongass Rainforest to the Levant and North Africa and many points between, Jack embraced the poetics of North American ecosystems. He is a poet, naturalist, nature writer and founder of The Naturalist School, and he teaches eco-spirituality at Creighton University School of Medicine, where he also leads retreats for students and faculty.

Jack seeks advice from cottonwood murmurs and grandmother oaks, sonic frogs and bluebird sutras, dragonfly rattles and the cosmogonic cracking of pond ice, and helps other seekers do the same. Wild nature – the heart of every living thing – sprouts and grows creativity; every generative act, when born of the wildest self, offers our hands and voice, body-souls, and feral imaginations to the fertile pulse of the cosmos, and hers to ours. Healing and compassion are rooted here.

In wider circles, he is the author of a few books and has published a bunch of poems, is a Pushcart nominee, and was the keynote speaker and featured poet for the 56th annual Neihardt Day at the John G. Neihardt Center. However, the potency of a poem is found in the act of composing; many of his poems are returned to the earth or mixed with pond water or given to the campfire.