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.
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
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…..
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.
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.
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
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
I love books in verse – especially biographies, particularly this one: Voices: The Final Hours of Joan of Arc, by David Elliott. One of my favorite things about this particular book is that it tells the format of each poem in the back of the book. Elliott writes in several signature forms, including shape poetry. Another great thing: this book is part of a series – so when its final page is turned, there will be another one waiting.
You can read more about David Elliott here and here.
I Am
The harp and that halo, all those things
from that bright morning to this ~
I am a fortress.
I am a helmet on a strange head.
Taken from: Saint Michael; Joan; Virginity; Her Hair.
This is the tenth day of the 2026 Slice of Life Challenge, and we are 1/3 of the way through the month of March’s daily blogging challenge. I’m celebrating some of my favorite living poets this month by sharing a Cento poem I’ve created from one of their poetry collections. I was introduced to Clint Smith through a Book Love Summer Reading Club I participated in through Penny Kittle’s group several years ago when we all read Counting Descent. I hung on every.single.line and marveled in the raw truths of exposed feelings. With poetry this rich and moving, the way it made my soul quiver with such ability to see things more clearly, I could not understand why everyone wasn’t rushing to devour more poetry and make it a main course of their reading diets. I understood why all the holiest books of this world are all in verse. I love the way Clint Smith uses lower case letters in titles and lines, and how he takes a perspective of what was said by many voices to a black boy. He writes prose poetry beautifully, too. Here is a poet who will take a reader of other genres and make them a reader who craves more poetry.
You can read about Clint Smith here. He won the 2014 National Slam Championship, and if I were picking a poet to have lunch with, I’d want my table with Clint Smith.
Invisible
You are invisible until
long after the song has stopped
until there’s nothing left inside
those stained glass shadows
maybe the poem is a cry for help
Taken from: Ode to the only black kid in the class; When Maze and Franie Beverly Come on in my House; what the fire hydrant said to the black boy; what the cathedral said to the black boy; Queries of Unrest.
The first ten poets, in order from bottom to top
A sneak peek of the poets I’m reading the next ten days
Welcome to Day 9 of the Slice of Life Challenge! I’m spending my month slicing about the living poets whose collections I enjoy reading – and using one of their collections to write Cento poetry, composed of existing lines reworked to form a new poem. Today, I’m sharing a Cento taken from the lines of poems in Maggie Smith’s collection entitled Goldenrod.
Maggie Smith appears in an interview here as a graduate of OSU.
Becoming
I am becoming my mother here
crossing a field, wading.
If you feel yourself receding, receding,
whatever your name is, you are with your own kind.
When are we most ourselves, and when the least?
My Cento poem features lines taken from these poems, in this order: Slipper, Threshold, Poem Beginning with a Retweet; Goldenrod; Ohio Cento.
This month during the Slice of Life Challenge, I’m featuring some of my favorite poetry books by living poets and writing Cento poetry each day using the existing lines from poems in each collection to form a new poem. Miranda Cowley Heller rose to writing fame as author of The Paper Palace, a novel selected by Reese Witherspoon for her book club. Turns out, she’s an amazing poet as well!
You can read more about Miranda Cowley Heller here and here .
Family Secrets
Inside the case were all the photos
Alone at the kitchen table, I still
dig myself out of the sink
and my children cry blood tears for me.
From poems in this order: Salvage; The Taste of Pennies; Half-Life; and The Earth is Flat
A sneak peek of the first ten days of living poets I’m celebrating this month
Common Threads 