Tag: women

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Celebrating Living Poets: Amanda Gorman

I was transfixed on the smiling poet delivering her poem with grace and poise at the Biden inauguration. Wearing a yellow coat, with red, she beamed and took the podium. When she spoke, I was speechless, mesmerized. Her name is Amanda Gorman, and her poetry is healing. Our nation needs a spoonful – perhaps a bottle full – of Amanda Gorman right now. You can read more about Amanda Gorman here and here. I’ve composed a Cento poem using Gorman’s lines from various poems, listed beneath the poem. Her words: Pay Attention. Learn from them. are words I will carry into the day.

We Rouse Ghosts

Even as we stand stone-still

we rouse ghosts ~

A grandma on a porch fingers her rosaries.

This truth, like the white-blown sky.

What endures isn’t always what escapes.

Pay attention.

Learn from them.

Taken from: The Shallows; Who We Gonna Call; The Miracle of Morning; & So; Cordage, or Atonement; Hephaestus; In the Deep

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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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Open Write June Day 1 with Sarah Donovan at www.ethicalela.com in the style of June Jordan

Photo by Susanne Jutzeler, suju-foto on Pexels.com

For Day 1 of the June Open Write, Dr. Sarah J. Donovan of Stillwater, Oklahoma invites us to write poetry using the mentor poet June Jordan’s poetry. You can read Sarah’s full prompt here.

Now This

these nights
they are
hormonal hot
flash hell ~
flapping bedbirds
fluffing sheets
sleeplessly
in all the heat
and rumble
of the dark

these nightmares
they rage in ~
nocturnal carnage
at the screaming
speed of melatonin
on the yellow
eyes of a
Great Horned
Owl in a
trembling tree hollow

these scarecrows
they lurk now
in apocalyptic meadows
where as children
we found
peaceful slumber
we called
sweet dreams ~
all those sugarplums
that once danced
in our heads

~ now this