Thanks Given Poet

B.P. Henry is a chef by profession, though poetry and painting came first and never left — not a second career, but a private practice: a way to process what the day-to-day doesn't leave room for. He works and publishes under the name Thanks Given Poet, a name earned rather than chosen, and he has spent years traveling widely, letting the history, culture, food, myth, and folklore of other places shape what he creates.

That same curiosity is what led to Bestiarum Culinarium — a personal project, not a professional one. It takes creatures from scripture and folklore across cultures and renders them as structured, reverent recipes, treating the kitchen the way his training taught him to: with discipline, respect, and attention to where something comes from. The kitchen becomes an altar here, and the meal a form of ritual — a chef's craft turned toward myth instead of the menu.

Survival Rhetoric, the poetry collection that follows, comes from the other side of that same instinct. Where the Bestiarum is ritual and order, this is unguarded — raw, confessional writing that moves through pain, failure, and self-reckoning without reaching for easy resolution. It is the therapy underneath the art: a mind working through its own wounds in plain sight, and finding, in the process, moments of clarity and hard-won steadiness.

Two disciplines, one person: a chef's precision applied to myth, and a poet's honesty applied to survival. The name Thanks Given Poet marks that shift — from offering to enduring, and back again.

Survival Rhetoric

Coming Soon

Where Language Becomes Survival

Survival Rhetoric is the record of a mind refusing to go quiet. Across its poems, TGP writes with raw honesty about pain, failure, and disillusionment — personal wreckage, political anger, and emotional damage laid bare without flinching. Language here functions as both witness and tool, a way of staying conscious and human when everything threatens to pull him under.

Rather than simply documenting collapse, the poems practice a kind of everyday alchemy, turning what's broken into moments of clarity and hard-won insight. Even in the darkest passages, an undercurrent of resilience persists — a refusal to surrender to numbness or despair, and a recurring impulse to transform suffering into something that might still serve life.

In the end, Survival Rhetoric is not defined by its darkness but by its determination to keep moving through it. The hope in these poems is not soft or easy. It is forged.

Three poems that hold the architecture of the book — its spirit, its geography, its refusal to be comforted.

I — The Burn

Practice Alchemy

Man down Man down The burn on my arm gets worse Each instant I acknowledge it I am curious about tomorrow I am also curious how fire Circumstance can smell fear Can dictate consequence I wonder about the next day Yet I never feel obligated to dream I Never fear Waking up Should I I would watch vessels plunge Into the skull of the river Onward to uncertainty Everyone Advises me to go to the hospital I appear concerned when in company At home I practice alchemy In the past my hand has caught fire With pain came clarity I believe most of us Scurry to find reason An aerial view shows us so small Seemingly unorganized Independently Pursuing our own survival Yet carrying ten times our weight In stress alone We do not move in a unified direction We are always willing To burden ourselves with more

▶ Watch the Reading

II — Southern France

Nice

I stood outside Watched the rain from my balcony Southern France Those well needed brief showers This time trees danced in the wind There was no thunder before the lightning hit Just bolts from the sky Immediately after One could hear car alarms in the distance I remained Still Silent Like I was on the verge Of delivering some Survival Rhetoric A resurrection was taking place I could hear my name being summoned Yet it was called from no definitive direction I pretended I was not around Became a tree and danced in the wind No more stillness No more Silence Not of love Nor what I have come to know as soul Nothing would stop the rain That came abruptly As I stood alone on my balcony The darkness of night Reminded me of southern France Alleys Near the beach that swallowed its natural light Allowed madmen to lurk in shadows I have been in those alleys Lurked in those shadows

▶ Watch the Reading

III — Consequence

Trains & Soul Mates

She said It has become too difficult to overcome our demons I said Demons are tall tales Like Paul Bunyan Fairness for good people Allah and Jesus She didn't much care for that But for me It was a rather simple philosophy All living creatures Logic, love, and leave Anything more is make believe Anything less is to be deceived Deprived I spoke of looking inside Our conversation ensued for some time It was more a debate Regarding the frailty of human nature I was impressed by her articulation of beliefs The way the train with its passing speed Reflected light off of her smooth yet chiseled face Prominent features Enhanced by the passing moon She spoke of her life experiences The extent of their influences on modern thought I spoke of the early history of America Referencing the Federalist Papers A happening not just a history Undying in my eyes Forever evolving She said Even with that man has built too lush a garden To protect from thieves I agreed

▶ Watch the Reading

Upcoming

Where the Bestiarum Culinarium puts mythological creatures on the plate, the Potatorium puts them in the glass. Drawing from scripture, mythology, and folklore across cultures, each entry renders a creature, god, or spirit as a structured cocktail recipe — the same reverent discipline applied to the bar as to the kitchen. Elixirs brewed from biblical plagues, philters distilled from fairy lore, libations poured for the restless dead. The draught does not corrupt. It reveals.

1 / 5

Apep cut into pieces and defeated nightly, only to reform by the next evening's crossing; Anubis presiding over a properly weighted scale; Ammit waiting at the edge of judgment for hearts that fail the test. Twenty gods and guardians drawn from three thousand years of temple and funerary text, cooked with the same dry reverence — and irreverence — as the rest of the series.

2 / 5

The Imugi coiled in the cold river, a thousand years into its wait for the dragon-pearl; the Gumiho's nine tails; the Dokkaebi's mischief at the edge of a mountain path. Twenty creatures drawn from Korea's shamanic, Confucian, Buddhist, and animist currents, rendered through the same culinary discipline as the volumes before it — the sixth in the Bestiarum series.

Sneak peek coming soon.

3 / 5

Jörmungandr circling the world-sea with his tail in his mouth; Fenrir bound and waiting; Hugin and Munin reporting back each night to Odin's table. Twenty creatures drawn from the Poetic and Prose Eddas, cooked with the same gallows humor and Northern stoicism the sagas themselves are known for — the seventh in the Bestiarum series.

Sneak peek coming soon.

4 / 5

A fictional museum catalog of objects that were never built, never sent, never kept — cataloged with the same seriousness other institutions reserve for what actually happened. A standalone literary object in the same voice as the Bestiarum.

Sneak peek coming soon.

5 / 5