Category: Creativity

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Celebrating Living Poets: Amy Nemecek

The third day of the 19th Annual Slice of Life Challenge is well underway at Two Writing Teachers’ website, and I invite you to visit and read the posts shared by writers across the globe, who give us a glimpse into their daily lives. This month, I’m featuring a living poet each day and creating a Cento poem from the poems in their collections. You can read more about Cento poetry here.

A few years ago, Fran Haley of North Carolina (blog: Lit Bits and Pieces) sent me a copy of The Language of the Birds by Amy Nemecek one spring when we were both participating in The Great Backyard Bird Count. I’m thanking Fran for this gift of poetry, and I’m celebrating Amy Nemecek today!

Amy Nemecek is a violinist and poet who lives in Michigan, and you can read more about her on this link that features a few other poets as well (scroll down on the post to read about Amy). Here is an additional link about Amy.

Choosing Tunes

Just when I think it’s over

I feed the jukebox quarters

As you slow dance around me

Lulled by the rhythm of pewter waves

I join you in its convex solitude

reminding you, reminding myself

our imperfect submission affords no rest.

My Cento lines are taken from these poems, in order: Larch Song; Acedia; Light Fantastic; Back to School; Companion; Beloved; and Vigil.

A sneak peek of the living poets featured the first ten days of March

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Celebrating Living Poets: Brian Rohr

Day 2 of the Slice of Life Challenge has me feeling energized with all of the fabulous writing that bloggers are sharing at Two Writing Teachers for the 2026 Slice of Life Challenge, where writers share daily snapshots of meaningful moments of their lives. You can check it out here.

My theme for this month was inspired by a friend who recently sent me a book she’d read (The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali). Thanks, Glenda Funk! Glenda said that she passes most of her books on, but she keeps poetry. It got me thinking about the living poets who are part of The Stafford Challenge and other writing groups like Poetry Friday. Perhaps I could expand my own collection of living poets – and that became a mission.

And so I set out to take a hard look at a diverse range of living poets. I discovered that no matter who we are – male, female, of all ethnicities and heritages, of urban or rural settings, of all religions and ages and places in the world – we all need poetry. Especially now. Especially in these times. Some of us read it, some of us write it, and many of us read and write it.

I decided to feature a living poet each day, celebrating their work and using their poems to create Cento poetry by taking lines of their existing poems and weaving together a whole new poem. You can read more about Cento here.

Today, I celebrate Brian Rohr, author of Shaken To My Bones: A Poetic Midrash on the Torah.

Brian Rohr started The Stafford Challenge, now in its third year of inviting poets to come together and to write a poem every day for one year. You can read more about Brian at his website. I’ve taken his collection of poems and formed a Cento poem, and I’ve listed the names of the poems I used, in order, beneath the poem.

When God Speaks

A star shoots across the sky.

Blue and red birds appear in my birch tree.

A bird with a blue head and blue wings flies past my window.

There are ways God speaks to me.

We can see the breath.

Taken from: Before; My Longing; Outside it is Raining; I am Joseph; In the Cool Air of the Morning Mist.

The first ten days of March will feature these poets – this is a sneak peek photo!
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Celebrating Living Poets: Sophie Diener

This month’s Slices of Life are dedicated to the love of poetry. Each day of March, I’ll be celebrating a living poet by creating a Cento poem from the lines of their poetry, along with links to more information about each poet as three of my writing circles intersect this month: The Slice of Life Challenge with Two Writing Teachers, Open Write with EthicalELA, and The Stafford Challenge.

I’m kicking off the celebration with Sophie Diener, who wrote Someone Somewhere Maybe. She’s a poet who teaches and resides in Ohio, and she started writing in journals from the age of five or six. She’s the friend so many of us would have had in grade school and kept for life. She keeps a strong social media presence on Tik Tok and Instagram. You can follow her on Instagram: @sophiediener and on Tiktok: @sophiediener.

You can read more by and about Sophie here and here.

Cento poems feature lines of existing poetry that are put together in new ways to create a whole new poem, a lot like a quilt. Or Frankenstein. Or one of those photography montages where all the photos are put together to look like Abraham Lincoln or something. As I create a Cento from each collection of poetry this month, I’ll add the titles of each poem in line order beneath the poem. If you’ve never written a Cento, you may wish to challenge yourself to try this form this month and see how fun it is to write! Here is a Cento I’ve created from several of the poems in Sophie Diener’s book Someone Somewhere Maybe:

Becoming

Things take time to fall into place

in this precious part of your life.

There are parts of you that fade with time

But oh, how beautiful.

Recognize how far you’ve come.

Lines taken from these poems, in this order: Have Hope; Don’t be a Stranger; Blue; A Heart with Legs; You are Safe.

First Ten Days of Living Poets
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Chicken Little

My small group of Stafford Challenge writers meets in the evening on the first Monday of every month, and each of us has a copy of Write the Story (Piccadilly Press) for prompts that take us into the random word zone. Does this book recognize my life, or do the stories I find in it echo my life? It’s uncanny sometimes how I feel like the words are swirling in some sort of mystic veil, landing in the poem so….knowingly.

Today’s poem comes from the book Write The Story (Piccadilly, 2020), where a prompt is given with a scenario and words to be used in the writing.

Story: A Character with OCD in the Worst Possible Situation

words: monastery, chalkboard, elephant, coast, turmeric, poppy, defeat, chessboard, inhumane, search

Unmedicated

that twitching eye tips his hand

indicates defeat

his monastery invaded

by enemies

of Chicken Little

furry belly yellow as turmeric

and just as sour ~ for him,

the sky forever falls,

the elephant in the room

following him on his

chessboard moves of inhumanity

like nails on a chalkboard

as he seeks and blames traitors

coasts the world for incriminating evidence

his complex ripe as a poppy

ready to burst wide open

feathering the fields of Oz

with his next unmedicated tantrum

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Poetic Valentines…and a SOLC Plan

First, huge thanks and a hug. Second, I’m sharing my plan for March slicing.

I was sitting with my schnoodle Boo Radley in my favorite chair in the living room when the text notification came on Valentine’s Day. My friend, fellow Slice of Life blogger, travel advice guru, fellow Schnoodle Mom, and Stafford Challenge small group buddy Glenda Funk of Idaho sent a Valentine full of smiles and hugs to our writing group that meets the first of each month to catch up and write! One of the greatest blessings of a writing community is finding common interests among those with whom we share some of our deepest feelings and so much of our day-to-day lives. A huge thanks to Glenda today, to all the writers here at Slice of Life, and others in writing group crossroads for making life more friendly and for helping me find the smiles in unexpected places.

Valentine’s Day hugs

arrive from across the miles

arms wide as friendship!

A plan has been brewing. It’s been in my bones, and it has finally taken root. I find that if I have a plan for the Slice of Life Challenge, I’m more successful at completing the challenge ~ and not just finishing it, but actually enjoying it the same way some marathon runners are actually smiling when they cross the finish line.

My Plan

Living poets are near and dear to my heart. I want to not only read and celebrate them, but also have an opportunity to share their work. That will be my own personal March Slice of Life Challenge plan. Each day, I’ll feature a collection of poems by a living poet, and I’ll compose a short Cento poem each day from that collection. Cento poems are some of my favorites – they’re a form of found poetry where lines of existing poems are arranged to create new poems. I’m still curating my featured list, but I wanted to share this idea in case there is anyone reading who is struggling with an idea and needs a place to start. Perhaps there are seeds in this idea. Some of my favorite reading is about books and how they have changed lives – poetry collections included.

I’ll see you at the starting line on Sunday, ready for the journey!

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An Open Invitation to Read With Us

For anyone in the Thomaston/Newnan/Zebulon areas of Georgia, please come out and join the Silent Book Club Flint River in person if you are free on the dates listed on the flyer below. If you are not local, please read with us wherever you are in the world and let us know you did! Set aside an hour of time to read, then send a quick snapshot of you and your book to the Facebook page where our group news happens.

I’m part of the team trying to build this book club so that we have both an in-person and virtual following. We love to see people and their books!

We can’t wait to hear

from our fellow readers ~ join

the movement to READ!

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Shoulder Buddy

Boo Radley, our rescue Schnoodle with multiple issues, fears, and insecurities, just likes to be close to us when we are settled and relaxing. His favorite thing is to get on the back of the chair and put his head on my shoulder, “sharing” my headphones. Every once in a while, as if on cue, he reacts to a poem in the same way I do……and I can feel it!

my shoulder buddy

Boo Radley sits listening

to new poetry

I feel him react

lift his head, take a deep breath

and I do the same

An invitation: if you are free tomorrow evening, please come read in person OR WHEREVER YOU ARE IN THE WORLD. See the dates below, but if you can’t come in person, please join our Facebook page and share what you read as we were reading in person.

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Evening West, Morning East

We’d gone for a slice of pizza and looked west on our drive through the rural rolling hills of Georgia. What we saw took our breath away. Golden twilight peeking over the hill. I stopped at the end of our driveway and photographed it, hoping to capture the vibrant reds, oranges, and yellows like a brush stroke of melted crayons. The next morning, I opened the front door to the beauty of the sun over the recent harvesting of trees.

Beauty surrounds us in this place we call home, and I wanted to share the artistry of the skies. It’s not always able to be seen this way in cloudless ways, but even though the eye can’t always see through to it, I know it’s always there. It’s euphoric when it reveals itself in its full splendor.

Here is an EAST WEST poem to celebrate the skies!

Evening West, Morning East

W her E

E uphori A

S urmount S ~

T wiligh T

Twilight, West
Daybreak, East

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Making Cookies with the Kindred Spirits

If you don’t have a book club in your life, go find you one – or better yet, start one – that likes to read across a variety of genres, gather and discuss books, and be so inspired by them that there is that one little thing or two that makes you want to do something you wouldn’t ordinarily do, see, taste, or experience. People who say that books can change your life aren’t joking; my father always said that if your book isn’t changing your life, it’s time to change your book. His words were never more true than yesterday, on what was his first heavenly birthday.

That’s one of the reasons that in the Kindred Spirits Book Club, we squeeze every drop of life from every book by allowing it to take us to new places. I think back to that first book we read together in January 2025, The Beautiful and the Wild by Peggy Townsend, and one of our group members noticed that one of the characters was always serving hot tea. We found a local tea room and paid them a visit one Saturday morning. One year later, we’re still going strong, seeking the full adventure that’s ours to claim as we find it between the pages.

Our last book of 2025 was The Book Club Hotel by Sarah Morgan, and one group member noticed that the chef in the book was always talking about her cookery books. It inspired us to want to take some sort of food class – a charcuterie board class, a cooking class, or some type of cake or cookie decorating class. We found the answer right in our own small town. A retired teacher created a cookie business as her next chapter and now travels the surrounding area with her own personally-designed cookie decorating kit, setting up in homes and giving groups the opportunity to create together.

L-R: Janette, me, Joy, Jennifer, Chris Tyree, and Jill (we were missing: Martina)

We called our friend Chris Tyree of Cookies by Chrissoula, and we set Friday, February 13 as our cookie decorating party, complete with a chili dinner and the fun of togetherness – in pajamas, sweats, and slippers. We laughed, we concentrated on cookie details, and commiserated over the woes of the world. If a cookie broke, we learned how to glue it back together with icing – discoveries that become metaphors for all the broken places in our own lives. Just slap some sugary sweetness in between the jagged edges and put it back together and keep going. In a world of tension and deadlines, frustrations and disappointments, we counted our blessings and considered the icing on our cookies, so to speak.

books and friends steer swift

currents, keep us anchored as

we share adventures

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Falling in Love with Art

My older daughter sent us a digital photo frame to which family members can upload photos so that they will appear like magic on the scrolling screen in our living room. I set it up, added the app, and invited all the kids to upload their pictures, expecting the fun surprises of noticing the new ones each week or so.

“Wait,” one son interjected. “Let me make sure I understand. So we can add photos that will just show up in your living room when anyone may be visiting?”

I warned him not to get any bright ideas and to keep it clean. Imagine my amused horror when a daughter zoomed in on a family photo where she’d been standing with her thumbs in her belt loops but actually shooting a bird. And someone added a picture of some stranger in a jon boat holding his arms out to show off a fish, but the fish is photoshopped into the photo several inches from his hands. They also add their favorites through the years, right back to all the times that made us laugh so hard our stomachs hurt. And some of family members no longer with us that are especially touching now. It’s my favorite art in the house ~ photography entertainment where my family members are in the frames.

there we are, kissing in front of Cadillac Ranch

Johnson Rt 66 Trip June 2023

spray painted on a vertical hood

there we are, coffee and breakfast in Tulsa and

standing in front of the Blue Whale of Catoosa

brothers on a bench in El Reno

and our feet on a painted street sign

and look! there’s Boo Radley in the kayak

wearing his Nemo life vest

ready for adventure, whatever that means

oooh, and there we all are in

Tennessee in the VRBO on the mountain

playing dominoes and talking trash

and all the kids in the pool

rocking the place with waves

the littlest smiling, showing off two

recently cut bottom teeth

the others lined up on the front porch

steps eating watermelon

and us eating seafood listening to

Suno songs about us eating seafood

an engagement, a wedding, a cup

of coffee in Starbucks

and watching the Blue Angels

from the heat of a parking lot

and the oldest grandson

eating a Biblical meal

Poppy in the oldest pub in Boston

eating oysters

and us in the sun in Kennebunkport

each memory scrolls by

smiles in these moments

of living and holding presence

belonging for our time

as we live it