Tag: living poets

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Celebrating Living Poets: Ada Limon

Ada Limon was our U.S Poet Laureate prior to our current Poet Laureate, Arthur Sze. She writes poems and puts them in a drawer, returning to them later to see which ones seem to have bloomed. She tells writers who are striving to make a living off “just writing” that their poetry wants them to live and work and pay their bills. Limon lives in Lexington, Kentucky and is inspired by nature, and of course by horses, being so close to the Kentucky Derby -and if you’ve never read How to Triumph Like a Girl, you simply must click this link and devour every single line. Ada Limon is one of the two poets our dog Ollie loves best, as his chewing on the corner of Bright Dead Things reveals (I cropped the damage out in the photo below).

I’ve created a Cento poem by using existing lines from two of her collections and arranging them into new poems. The first poem is from lines in poems in The Carrying.

What a Day Is

The big-ass bees are back, tipsy, sun-drunk

The birds were being so bizarre today

that brute sky opening in a slate-metal maw

and the dogs are going bonkers in the early morning

and this is what a day is. Beetle on the wainscoting,

But friends, it’s lunchtime.

Lines for my cento were taken from these poems, in this order: Dandelion Insomnia; Almost Forty; The Leash; The Visitor; Late Summer after a Panic Attack; The Light the Living See

I couldn’t resist TWO poems for today. Need I say that Ada Limon is in my top tier of favorite poets? Maybe even my very favorite. These lines for this cento were taken from Bright Dead Things.

Shower Dragon

I’m crying near the shower

changing swirl of hips and hope

part female, part male, part terrible dragon

But I want to be more like a weed

perched on the edge of euphoric plummet

of psychedelic-colored canaries: a cloud

of air, of water, of fire, of earth

of fast wishes caught by nothing.

Taken from, in this order: Cower, Play it Again, Accident Report in the Tall, Tall Weeds; The Good Fight; Midnight, Talking About our Exes; Adaptation; The Whale and the Waltz Inside of It; The Plunge.

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Celebrating Living Poets: Billy Collins

If you’ve been following the celebration of living poets I’ve been adding to the circle each day, you just knew all along that this poet was coming to the party. Whenever I need to stop taking life so seriously but still keep the reality in perspective and blend in some humor, I reach for Billy Collins. He’s got me covered when it comes to a balm for the heart on weary days – which is pretty much every day when the pollen count is high and I have spring fever and work in a windowless cubicle. Oh, I have my Billy Collins favorites ~ Whale Day, Banana School, An Irish Spider.…all of them are as unique as his personality and just as engaging. He’s a former US Poet Laureate. In one of his writing videos somewhere in the past, I remember him saying, “Bring in a spider.” The spider is the metaphor for the unexpected zinger in a poem. I see them in his poems, all these spiders, and I strive for them in my own. It’s like that one secret ingredient that makes the poem come alive. You can read more about Billy Collins here on his website.

Worms Speak of a Narcissist

Surely, narcissism fails to capture

people on the street

and what you had been feeding me

just an expanse of white ink

pass through my special glasses, but not you.

Now, I am free of the collar

It’s the science of worms

near a breadcrumb on the curb

and, I swear, they began talking about you.

Lines for this Cento were taken from, in this order: Freud; Height; The Order of the Day; the Peasants’ Revolt; Special Glasses; The Revenant; The Introduction; Height; Carry

31 days of Living Poets in a tribute book stack – STANDING STRONG
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Celebrating Living Poets: Naomi Shihab Nye

Throughout the month of March, I’m celebrating a living poet each day. The living poet I’m reading today is Naomi Shihab Nye, and her collection of poems I’m using is Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners. I’m writing Cento poems, which are lines of existing poetry that are taken and put together to form a new poem, much like making a patchwork quilt.

Naomi Shihab Nye’s line from a poem was featured as last year’s National Poetry Month poet by Poems.org (if you have not requested your free one for this year, request it here before they run out – and you can also download it for a letter-size poster. I was pleasantly surprised that a former student from the school district where I work was the artist for last year’s poster. You can read about the artist Christy Mandin here.

When I read the full poem Gate A-4 by Nye from last year’s poster, my mind went back to the Albuquerque airport – the Sunport, from which we had flown back home to Georgia after driving half of Route 66 in June of 2024. That’s a small airport, and it’s the reason we chose it to fly home. When we do the other part of Route 66, we will fly into Los Angeles and out of Albuquerque, basically having completed Route 66 from both ends to the middle from each direction. In any case, I was seated on the wall opposite the check-in desks, and I could envision the entire scene of the poem playing out. It warmed my heart in all the best ways. I’d been right there. Right in that spot where the action in the poem happened. And I was grateful for the memory of being there to be able to “see” it so clearly. My Cento poem today is rooted in the bad news for the woman in the poem at Gate A-4. My last line is in response to how Naomi herself took the bad news and made it good.

Poets will do that.

You can read more about Naomi Shihab Nye here. As a member of the Stafford Challenge who will attend the first poetry conference in Oregon this June, you can believe that one of the speakers I’m most looking forward to hearing is Naomi Shihab Nye. I hear her appearances are rare, which already has me anticipating what a treasure of a moment this will be.

I use Cento sticks to capture golden lines, then rearrange them into new poems.

Bad News

What can you expect?

News loves to be bad

Poured full of ripe language

beneath each human move

What surprised you lately?

Lines for this cento were taken from these poems: The Tent; Moment of Relief; After Listening to Paul Durcan, Ireland; Showing Up; Where do Poets find Images?

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Celebrating Living Poets: Joy Harjo

The living poet I’m celebrating today is Joy Harjo, our National Poet Laureate from 2019 to 2022. Harjo is a Native American poet who writes about nature, sky, and origins. I am using her existing lines from The Woman Who Fell from the Sky to create a Cento poem.

You can read more about Joy Harjo here.

Night Sky

From the moon we all look the same

When the earth makes a particularly hard turn

When embers from the sacred middle are climbing out the other side of stars

Wings of night sky

Or is it the shadow of a woman on the run?

Lines taken from the poems, in this order: Promise; The Song of the House in the House; The Place the Musician Became a Bear; The Dawn Appears with Butterflies; Witness

Sneak peek of poets coming days 21-31
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Celebrating Living Poets: Kate Baer

She’s a poet with a playlist for everything. She finds messages of wisdom in her hate mail replies and turns it into found poetry. She’s a mother, a wife, and a writer, and she’ll make you stop and think. The living poet I’m celebrating today is Kate Baer, who was first recommended to me by my friend and small group writing buddy Glenda Funk. I started with her collection I Hope This Finds You Well and then read all the others, and I’m anxiously awaiting whatever comes next. Hers are dessert poems with a bit of a sharp kick, like a tangy lemon tart or a bowl of the sweetest watermelon sprinkled with Tajin. It hits you square in the womanhood solidarity in its delicious aftertaste.

You can read more about Kate Baer here. Be sure to scroll down deep enough in the article to listen to her playlists – they’re all linked, and I leave her writing playlist on repeat whether I’m writing or working in my cubicle with my noise-cancelling headphones (perfect for when a colleague is making a phone call or having a conversation).

Advice on writing from Kate can be found here. Another interview here.

Snapshot

The moment before the photograph

you turn and lift your face

in the blue eye of winter

fat with love, drunk with adoration

eyes up, arms out

walk out into the evening and sing

no music. Just the world and all its noise. You.

I never wanted anything more than you.

Taken from: The Bridesmaid’s Song; After; Today; Grown Alice; Undivided Attention; The Protagonist Remembers; How it Will Happen; For My Son on His 13th Birthday.

Poets for Days 11-20
Another Sneak Peek of what has been and what’s to come…..
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Celebrating Living Poets: Wendy Cope

Each day of March during the Slice of Life Challenge, I’m celebrating living poets by using their work to create new poems from existing lines. How fitting that today’s poet wrote The Orange – – just like a slicing logo! Her name is Wendy Cope, and she is from Great Britain. Her title poem was born from a simple moment with friends and has become a world favorite. In her story below, which describes how she came to write the poem, it reminds me of Frank O’Hara’s famous lunch poems. She is the UK female parallel to his New York City male perspective of capturing the simple moments.

Wendy Cope shares here about how she came to write The Orange, and also here.

In Orbit

We looked up at the stars

both in a spin with nowhere to spin to

I can’t sleep at night.

I can’t forgive you.

I want to do it anyway

But it could take a while.

Taken from: Song; 9-Line Triolet; I Worry; Defining the Problem; Seeing You; Men Talking.

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Celebrating Living Poets: Misha Collins

As we move through March, here’s a St. Patrick’s Day hat tip to living poet Misha Collins. He’s an actor, a poet, and a lot of other things such as a lifeguard, motorcyclist, and clean eater. I’ve added a link to some more information about his life, below, and I’m using his collection Some things I still can’t tell you to compose a Cento poem from his work. Unfortunately, this book was a divorce announcement – which doesn’t make me happy, but it does show how poetry can be used for so many purposes in our lives. In the peace of a dove on a branch, in the beauty of summer rain steaming off the hot asphalt, and even in the heartbreaking pain of divorce.

You can read more about Misha Collins here.

Used Book Parade

For the first time in three years

yesterday I read a used book

looking just the same

and perfect

and needed to cry for a scene

that that parade of it all might ignite me.

My Cento lines are taken from: Housekeeping; Reread; Alessandra; Way-finding; The Center; Taxi

A sneak peek at poets for days 11-20
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Celebrating Living Poets: Victoria Hutchins


We are nearly halfway through the Slice of Life Challenge 2026, and I can’t believe how quickly we are moving! I’m enjoying all the things I’m learning from bloggers all around the world and connecting with them through the power of words.

I’ve sent both my daughters a copy of Make Believe: poems for hoping again by Victoria Hutchins. It’s one of those poetry collections that right from the first page, you’re nodding in agreement with full head movement even if you’re in a room all alone. You have full conversations with Victoria, as if she were your best friend or even your sister. After you read each poem, it’s your turn to reply, and you do – – imagining she is right there at the table with a cup of coffee, wearing pajamas and eating a Mason jar of overnight oats while you chat the morning away with her in your head.

Victoria Hutchins rose to poetic fame on Instagram and TikTok. You can listen to an interview with her and read more about her here. Hutchins offers hope and encouragement in dark days through each poem.

Listen

At first, I didn’t recognize her.

Almost everyone is a stranger until you zoom in or pan out.

The life of it has hollow eyes.

That’s the thing about imaginary friends.

That’s by design.

Listen closely and maybe you’ll realize – it isn’t your voice.

Taken from these poems, in this order: god on Main Street; panda aspen grove; is the party dead already?; god as imaginary friend; blindside; whose hate did you swallow?

Sneak peek of books for days 10-20

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Celebrating Living Poets: Joy Sullivan

It’s Day 14 of the Slice of Life Challenge, and I am celebrating a different living poet each day throughout the month of March. As I curated the list of poets whose collections I wanted to use to inspire my writing, I selected a diverse range of writers – young/old, men/women of differing faiths, lifestyles, and races. Today, I’m celebrating Joy Sullivan, whose collection was like eating a carton of ice cream. I couldn’t stop at a serving size – – I devoured the whole decadent bowl of poetry in one sitting – ice cream, whipped cream, caramel and chocolate drizzle, nuts and a cherry – and I see myself rereading this one frequently in carton-sized servings.

You can read more about Joy Sullivan here and here. She also has a Substack, Necessary Salt. Since Amanda Gorman’s reading at Biden’s inauguration where she wore the yellow coat and made poetry ring in ears across this nation and the rise of a generation of viral social media poets like Joy Sullivan, Lyndsay Rush, and others, including spoken word poets like Clint Smith and Sarah Kay, and event writers such as Chris Vitiello who appears as The Poetry Fox in a fox suit with an old typewriter and clicks out poems on the spot for folks who give him a word, we have seen a resurgence of poetry that makes it no longer a dead man’s indulgence. These younger writers are breathing life back into something that, for a few generations now, has met with fear and intimidation on the ears of high school and college students who were forever being required to analyze it as if it were a frog being dissected.

But poetry isn’t some ill-fated lab frog destined to be gutted and pinned flap by flap to the black tarry pan and exposed as parts and pieces by hands wearing vinyl gloves and gagging the whole way through it. No, poetry is ice cream and decadent cake, old dogs and puppies, blankets and candles and mostly arms that reach out, take your hand, meet you wherever you are when you think you’re alone in your feelings, and draw you in for an embrace. It coaxes out emotions you didn’t know you could feel. Step into this book and some of the other living poets and discover a pulse you never even knew you had running through your blood. Start at your local library and arrange inter-library loans. Keep a ranking of those you like, and then, out of the blue, there will be that one poet whose lines are a fish net, and you’re the fish. You will be forever hooked. There’s a word for it……

There’s A Word for It

What do you call nostalgia for all the places

beneath this wing

of swallowtails, sow thistle

wild as grass, so cool and soft

it softens something?

Taken from: Ghost Heart; The Cashier at the Gas Station Asks Where I’m From; Of Wildflowers; Tiger Farm; Sockeye

A sneak peek of the poets I’m celebrating Days 10-20
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Celebrating Living Poets: Lyndsay Rush

She calls herself Mary Oliver’s Drunk Cousin. Lyndsay Rush is the living poet I’m celebrating today during the 2026 Slice of Life Challenge. You can read all the posts each day at www.twowritingteachers.org as writers blog throughout March and post their links on the community site. If I had a colleague at the water cooler flattening her hand to admire her nail polish and declaring that she was so damn sure she would never read a poem she liked, this is the book I’d hand her before retreating around the corner and peering over the top of the cubicle at her in her chair devouring these poems and proving herself wrong.

Lyndsay Rush, author of A Bit Much, got her start as an Instagram poet. Click her name to read the interview that gives more information about Lyndsay. I’ve used her collection to create a Cento poem by writing several of her existing lines into a new arrangement.

The Dark Doorway

You heard it here first:

Otters hold hands while they sleep

If you’re feeling weird lately

stand in the dark doorway of

The Gospel I was raised on

for the nonbelievers

and drive off into the sunset

Lines in this Cento are taken from these poems, in this order: Maybe Crocs are Okay; Loving Each Otter; Help; Someone to Eat Chips With; His Body is Bread and So is Mine; Beware of Lost Boys; A Spell for Success

A sneak peek of poets days 11-20