More Things In Heaven & Earth
A collection of poetry and collage for the wilderness of faith.
Mystical Mormon Poetry
What if losing certainty isn't the end of faith?
More Things in Heaven and Earth is my debut collection of poetry and collage about Mormonism, mysticism, the body, scripture, doubt, wonder, and the wilderness between what we were taught and what we have come to know. These poems inhabit the liminal spaces of my childhood religion—between faith and doubt, body and spirit, scripture and lived experience, heaven and earth.
If you are...
- questioning your faith
- rebuilding a spiritual life
- grieving an old certainty
- still in love with the stories you inherited
- looking for the sacred in the ordinary
- wondering what might exist beyond the categories you've been given
These poems might be for you.
Enter the Book
This is a book about questions that don't resolve neatly.
You don't have to know what you believe before you enter.
The Poems
A poem I'd give you if . . . you were relearning how to pray or wonder:
Prayer for a Sunday Morning
"Bless this place . . .
Bless our tears;
bless our joy . . .
May we breathe,
and in that breath feel connected to ourselves and You."
A poem I'd give you if . . . you were trying to reconnect to the Divine Feminine and the Mothers of us all:
Matriarchal Blessing
"Speak my name to the heavens, to the God of our mothers . . .
Call me into your love . . .
blessing mother, blessing child.
Blessed world."
The Art
Many of the poems in More Things in Heaven & Earth are accompanied by Tarot-inspired collages that create another landscape alongside the text.
From left to right, images for "Garden," "Dusty Chapel," and "Alchemy
The Questions
What remains sacred when certainty disappears?
Can doubt be a form of devotion?
What do we inherit from the stories that made us?
Where does the divine live—in heaven, or in the body?
These are some of the questions that led me here.
The Reviews
"a book of earned questions"
Reading this book feels like bathing in a quiet pond where stars reflect and where questions play over the surface like fireflies. Perry-Turner introduces readers to Mormonism’s liminal spaces with deep wisdom and compassion. is a book of earned questions. The reader is not only a receiver of Perry-Turner’s wise words but also the transmitter of their own wisdom. Allyson has offered a poetic way into the wilderness of faith: “You left us in the desert. / We thrived in the desert.”
— Elizabeth Pinborough, author of The Brain’s Lectionary: Psalms and Observations
"an ever-widening spiral"
More Things in Heaven and Earth is full of magic, a lesson in both alchemy and resurrection. Allyson Perry-Turner transfigures the heft of their own struggles, and invites us in to an ever-widening spiral; through their careful unfurling of meaning, they tease apart familiar stories and iconography to layer in striking new depth and rich, surprising texture of their own. (Sometimes, even literally—such as introducing sisal wall and foyer couch florals into the silhouettes of a tarot collage. The art throughout the book is its own landscape to traverse and glean from, each one a mesmerizing visual incantation.) Rather than transcending above any of it, though, Allyson’s work brings into focus the inherent mysticism that already exists in everything, and in each one of us. Readers will be left in awe by Allyson’s intricate waltz: the way her poems feel real and grounded, despite the heaviness of unanswerable asking, while still being ethereal enough to dance across unfathomable depths.
— Aisling Rowan, author of Birds to Bones: Writings on Grief, Gender, Mormonism, & Magic
"like any good prayer, or good spell"
Allyson Perry-Turner’s More Things in Heaven and Earth is a collection of echoes. In syntax, imagery, and theme, Perry-Turner constantly holds up a mirror, revealing the deep kinship between word and image, mysticism and feminism, ancient scripture and present questions, heaven and earth, the divine and the self, the self and this world. Like its ecological counterpart, the body is a site of chronic pain and constant wonder. Perry-Turner reminds us that life’s small moments are already soaked in “golden celestial light,” that “the world is always calling [us] home.” The result is a book of poetry and collage that is accessible and fresh, warm and startling. Here, the apocalypse of a “faith crisis” is not an end, but a book of beginnings. The poet and poems are in a constant state of change—“an uncovering / a revelation / an unveiling”—and invite you to unravel too. This book slows you down, invites you back to your body and breath, back to your earthly home, heaven-soaked. Reading More Things in Heaven and Earth will pull you into present-tense, like any good prayer, or good spell.
— Millie Tullis, author of These Saints are Stones and editor-in-Chief of Exponent II
About the Poet
Allyson Perry-Turner (she/they) is a poet, mystic, librarian, and eternal student of life. Her writing has been published in Exponent II, The Book of Queer Mormon Joy, Last Leaves Magazine, and others. Allyson’s art centers around the intersections of Mormonism, queerness, mystical spirituality, chronic pain, and the natural world. Allyson also reads Tarot, studies astrology, and works with energy healing modalities — all in the service of guiding others to discover the wholeness and magic within. She lives in Colorado with her husband, their cat, and far too many (yet not enough) books.
There are more things in heaven and earth than we have words for.
Perhaps poetry is one way of finding them.