Latest Poetry Articles

Jun 9

Poetry Diary featuring a poem by Kathyrn Bevis

Reflections on overwork, grief and the lives of small wild things by Clare Shaw

TS Eliot was wrong: May is the cruellest month. It took Kathryn Bevis away. She was a beautiful human, a gifted poet and a close friend, and I don’t yet have the words for her loss. A week ago, I took the decision to go on compassionate leave. Grief is exhausting, and so is the life of a freelance poet.

Kim Moore and Clare Shaw ∙ 16 LIKES

Rosie Hadden

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One of my favourite books on grief is called A Shelter for Sadness by Anne Booth and David Litchfield. It's a kid's book but I think we all could do with creating our own shelter. The first line is Sadness has come to live with me and I am building it a shelter. I am building a shelter for my sadness and welcoming it inside......We need time and space to be with our grief and to honour it and our love. Grief is love. Take care of your tender heart at this time. Much love Clare from here in Cornwall Rosie xxx

Ann Grant

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I’m glad you are slowing down, it’s always a good idea xxx

The Schism Ring by Jenny Lindsay

Jun 1

Anatomy of a Hounding

fear and factionalism in Scottish poetry

NB: This essay was originally commissioned and published by The Dark Horse for its Autumn/Winter edition in 2020. I republish it here to complement my contribution to the recently published The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht: Voices from the Frontline of Scotland’s Battle for Women’s Rights. (London: Constable, 2024)

Jenny Lindsay ∙ 22 LIKES

The Fourth Wheel

Jun 7

The Fourth Wheel, Issue 106

Chronometer status anxiety, ambassador controversies and... watch poetry!

Hello and welcome back to The Fourth Wheel, the weekly watch newsletter that needs to take a little trip - thankfully a rare occurrence - to Corrections Corner. I appreciated the response to last week’s newsletter on the Ressence ‘catalogue raisonné’ but as several people pointed out (among them, awkwardly enough, people who had worked on it directly) a…

Chris Hall ∙ 7 LIKES

kingflum

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That chronometry poem was dope 😂

The Poetry Edit

Jun 3

COMPETITION TIME! Get your poem featured on The Poetry's Dead Podcast!

The Poetry Edit and The Poetry's Dead Podcast are joining forces to bring you an amazing opportunity to showcase your poetry talent!

THE WHO: The Poetry Edit is a weekly poetry newsletter promoting proper recompense for poets and creating opportunities within the poetry industry. The Poetry’s Dead Podcast is a weekly poetry podcast exploring the work of poets old and new, with an “Agony Poet” and a little bit of craic mixed in!

The Poetry Edit ∙ 7 LIKES

Matt Taylor

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Count me in 😜

Alexis Brooks

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Hat thrown in the ring!

Two Sylvias Press' Weekly Muse

May 30

Two Sylvias Press Spring Newsletter

Jane Hirshfield joins us AND our Poetry Retreat is back!

Hello Friends, We hope you are having a great spring season filled with inspiration! Thank you for taking the time to read our newsletter—it’s filled with creative opportunities for you and your writing: our annual Online Poetry Retreat is back; award-winning poet Jane Hirshfield will join us for a Zoom conversation; our Chapbook Prize is accepting submissions; and we have just released a new book in our Wilder Prize Poetry Book Series!

Two Sylvias Press ∙ 9 LIKES

Branwen Drew

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May 30

Just signed up for July poetry workshop. I am looking forward to it.

Poetry Unbound

Jun 9

To remember

is to undo dis-membering

Dear friends, This week was an anniversary of a dear friend, Glenn, who died suddenly in the early days of Covid. June of 2020. The 4th. I got a phone call from his magnificent daughter, and — because I usually get texts, not calls, from her — I wondered if something was wrong. Something was wrong. She had to tell her dad’s friends that he’d died. My go…

Pádraig Ó Tuama ∙ 274 LIKES

Karen Ehrens

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Beautiful, beautiful poetry, Pádraig. Thank you for sharing it and the tribute to your dear friend.

My mother speaks to me as a mourning dove. Like the dove, my mother was sweet and gentle. I have been so pleased to hear doves in this new place to where I relocated. This year marked 40 years (!) that I have been without her physical presence.

The sound of the mourning dove is also wistful, and even sometimes sad, but the bird still sings. Her life with my father was not easy. She is buried next to two tiny grave stones of my brothers, who were described to me as “stillborn.” I was too young to understand how heart-wrenching this had to be for her, happening at a time when such tragedies were not discussed, but hushed.

Thanks to the mourning dove, my mom can be brought to my mind and my heart, where I can recall her love and tenderness.

Galen Garwood

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Thank you, Pádraig, for your lovely poem of remembrance by association. A word. A life. Very touching, indeed. I lost my brother to the pandemic and it was one word that wormed its way into a poem:

CAPSIZE for my brother

Brother, you and I were in the kitchen

making pineapple sandwiches for lunch.

You were seven.

I was four.

The lid to the jar of mayonnaise slipped

from my fingers

and fell to the floor spinning

in a lopsided dance till it quit, having landed

upside down. ‘Capsize,’ you said.

That’s what you call it

when something falls

and flips over onto the ground,

or when a boat is about to sink

into the sea.

The word burrowed into my brain,

where it waits, always, for the spiraling

sound of a fallen jar-lid spinning

onto the floor, that polished memory

breaking loose and rising still

with the winnowing song of your laughter,

a warm wind above my head.

You gave us something

in our trajectory of brotherhood, something dear

and enduring, two lost children surviving

an empty house, searching

for love, hope, and words,

the singing of the ocean

our only lullaby.

Poetry Bulletin

May 20

Poetry Bulletin: May 2024

A personal update + important FYI on fee support + new resource with deadlines

Hey poets — this bulletin is late, because I’ve been spending time with family, walking in the woods with my dad, stopping for trilliums whenever we find them. We recently found out he has cancer, and the most honest thing I can say is that when he’s not well, I’m not well… We’re sorting out what this means in the near-term, and I’m listening for where …

Emily Stoddard ∙ 29 LIKES

James A Higgins

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May 28

I too have a daughter I'm very close too and she worries too. It scared her when I needed a sudden addition of a pacemaker a year ago at 82, but I am doing very well. I am so sorry to hear about your dad's cancer and I hope it responds well to treatment and he can remain well for a long time.

Andrew Calis

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May 21

I'm so sorry to hear about your father❤️

I also can't thank you enough for writing posts like this -- even at the risk of alienating readers. Peace will only come from action. I'm still trying to find my own form of action as a Palestinian-American poet; but I admire how emphatically you're using your platform to advocate for peace and change.

The Borowitz Report

May 29

Announcing the Trump Haiku Contest Winner!

A TBR Contest Special

After thousands of you voted in the Trump Haiku Contest Runoff, we have a winner! This TBR Contest Special newsletter features the winning poem, analysis of the voting, and an exclusive interview with the triumphant poet. Contestants were asked to submit haikus on this theme: “Trump’s innermost musings as he sits in court.”

636 LIKES

Andy Borowitz

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May 29

This just in: Kari Lake claims she won the haiku contest.

Jeffrey K. Morris

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May 29

TBR: It was rigged. Only LOSERS would accept that result — everyone is saying that the innernet was programmed by Biden to switch votes. That’s nice. Where are Hilary’s emails? You’re a loser Borowitz. I prefer winners of which I am majorly the biggest. No one wins like I do. You should ENDORSE TRUMP and your human scum readers should vote for me—only if they want to win.

ps: me me me me me me me

Some Flowers Soon

May 31

Pinks #18: Close-Fitting House of Velvet

The poetry of the foxglove

dark-blistered foxgloves Geoffrey Hill Once, before my children started school, we went on holiday to Cornwall in early June. Arriving in West Penwith, the southernmost part of the county, I was thinking of the poet W.S. Graham, who lived there for much of his life and was friendly with the artists around St. Ives.

Jeremy Noel-Tod ∙ 24 LIKES

John Davies

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May 31

Thanks for this fascinating post. Meeting up with poet Brendan Cleary after his escape from a prolonged hospital stay, I find him reading W. S. Graham's 'New Collected Poems', edited by Matthew Francis (Faber, 2004) and he highlights for me this moving poem, both robust and gentle. You can find it on the Scottish Poetry Library website here too: https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/alexander-graham/

Like Brendan, who has a new collection out from Tall Lighthouse with the ironic title 'Last Poems?', Graham sets a wonderful example. I was also struck by the Cornish connections. I'm working on a book about Rowena Cade, The Minack Theatre and her family. It's said that Rowena would take the digitalis prescribed for her dogs – if it was good enough for them it would be good enough for her. For background and context I've recently enjoyed reading 'Zennor - Spirit of Place' by Bob Osborne (a.k.a. Rebel Not Taken).

Caroline Hett

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I was thinking of WS Graham’s Dear Bryan Wynter very recently when a rogue foxglove sprouted up, and up, against the wall in my own garden. The seed must have been dropped by a bird. I like the spiky intervention so much I’m going to harvest the seeds and plant foxgloves in my garden intentionally. I kept meaning to buy Zaffar Kunial’s collection and your post has finally nudged me into ordering it. Thank you.

Shaw and Moore

Jun 7

Poetry Diary featuring a poem by Amanda Dalton

Kim Moore

May has been a pretty brutal month for me in terms of work. I’ve been drowning under acres of marking, from university. I’ve also been completing my first term as an External Examiner for Edge Hill University - which has been interesting, but also exhausting - in the way that doing anything new is exhausting in its uncertainty.

Kim Moore and Clare Shaw ∙ 11 LIKES

Gertie Hyde

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Thank you for sharing your thoughts… wish I could do a PhD with you …

Nightcap

Jun 2

A Haiku Competition!

When I was 9, my mom asked me to draw a mermaid. I produced something so unintentionally phallic that it's inspired decades of poetry.

In my mid-20s, before I landed my first job in journalism, I had a blog. We don’t need to talk about the blog—it’s embarrassing now. But my loyal readers back then, consisting mostly of friends and family, loved one particular feature the most: the Annual Mermaid Cock Haiku Competition.

Laura Bassett ∙ 13 LIKES

James Suffern

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Jun 2

My bocce balls babe—

Lingerer…I’d finger her

To be mine in brine

Anna McGorman

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Jun 3

She cums like a shot

Not with the clap but a flap

No gonorrhea

The Priory

Jun 11

John Donne: "Batter My Heart, Three-Person'd God"

A biblical divorce

[A portrait of Donne as a young man, c. 1595, in the National Portrait Gallery, London; image in public domain] "Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.”The Priory is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Karen Swallow Prior ∙ 53 LIKES

Mel Bjorgen

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16h

I've missed "Professor Prior mode" and am glad to dive in again.

I loved this sonnet when I read it. Although initially I did not understand all the older words in the way they were used (there was a lot of looking up), I understood what it was saying. I immediately thought of Psalm 42:7: "All your breakers and waves have rolled over me."

The part that intrigued me the most was the word viceroy and how he used it. Is my understanding correct in that he means to say that God is the ruler of his inner person, or is there a different way to understand it?

"Wit" is one of my favorite plays/films. Emma Thompson is my favorite actress, and she is brilliant in it. I need a watch party, though no one wants to watch it with me because they say it's depressing. I think it is beautiful.

Thanks for your definitions of poetry terms. I appreciate it.

Richard Myerscough

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Who do you think Donne sees as the enemy, Karen? Is it a personification of Sin or perhaps the Devil? My New Testament lecturer believed that Paul in Romans 7 is speaking about humanity wedded to Satan in sin . I was never convinced, certainly not from that passage, but maybe he and Donne are on the same page? I also wondered if line 6's 'Labour to admit you' was a sideways glance at Song of Songs 5:5 where the Loved's hands drip with myrrh and struggle to open the door. But perhaps that's an allusion too far.

Really looking forward to this series - the only Donne I've read is Philip Yancey's recent modern rendering of Donne's Devotions which was excellent. I didn't have any of Donne's poetry on my shelves so I've bought the Delphi Kindle edition of his poems - they do a great job and for less than $2 it's a steal.

Unmapped Storylands with Elif Shafak

Jun 9

Different Emotions In Different Languages

Turkish is my mother tongue. The language of my grandmother, poetry and dreams. The amorphous shapes appearing in the dregs left at the bottom of coffee cups, waiting to be read. The sound of wind chimes. It is the smell of earth after a sudden storm, when you inadvertently search yourself, check your flesh, not sure…

Elif Shafak ∙ 326 LIKES

Catherine van Dijck

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As a Dutch woman who has lived for most of her life in Greece, I can totally identify with what you wrote. Yes, it is easier to swear in Greek, it is also easier to express love in Greek (doing so in Dutch makes me feel awkward and self conscious). But when I have to count, I revert to Dutch!

Jake Zuppa

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Thank you for writing this! I lived in Italy and had so many fascinating experiences related to language that I put into a 5min comedy bit years ago. My mother was Lebanese-American and due to the era her parents only encouraged her and her brother to only learn English to assimilate into the American culture. I have always wanted to learn Arabic, but haven’t done it yet. Maybe when I’m 70 I will finally find the time to learn. Your writing is beautiful.

Desperate Love Letters To A Wounded Earth

Jun 7

Leaving a Cruel Culture -

For Annie

A friend asks me, What is the Story that needs to be told at this time? Synchronicity. I glance over three letters in the mail today from strangers who each thank me for the ways we have interconnected in the past. Last night, a participant in my writing class read us a poem he had found in a book he had been gifted from the library of a friend after her death. An hour later, her photograph showed up on his random screen saver. It was W S Merwin’s amazing poem, Thanks, which ends

Deena Metzger ∙ 28 LIKES

Carolyn Brigit Flynn

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A stunning essay, Deena. Thank you. Blessings upon Merwyn, Rexroth, Hamhill, Metzger, and all the poets and visionaries helping us find our way. I think of a poem that has sustained me for many years, which I recently taught in my writing groups. Thank you for seeing in the dark. Thank for you for your stubborn insistence on life. Thank you for holding fast to poetry. Thank you, we say, dark though it is.

Leavings by Deena Metzger

(For Sister Cao ngoc Phuong)

I want what is left:

The tea leaves, the soiled images on cards,

The gasp of words as meaning slips away,

The rinds of the alphabet,

The chewed poems of prisoners,

The bones and the skeletons,

The secretions, the shattered sperm,

The blind blood, the phlegm and the cough.

It has always been women’s work to prepare the corpse.

But, I will not make a corpse from these elements,

I will make a child.

I will make you such a rose of a child,

A rose of a child held in the crook

Of the dark hand of a dead branch,

I will make you a child shining

Like an angel from these elements of dark,

And the child will sing.

This is what we have

This is what we have to work with.

So give them to me,

First your dead, moldering

In the dreadful heat of your deserted cities,

Then give me the iron birds in the sky,

With their demented warbling,

Last, I want your radiant soul

With its eternal shimmer.

Give me everything mangled and bruised,

And I will make a light of it to make you weep,

And we will have rain,

And begin again.

mezmermente

•

Prediction of the cautious is a curious thing right now it gives the machine exactly what is put in, the only difference between humans is our poop can be beneficial to the soil. Feeling need to remind us all The Tao is Now and that is our universe in all its splendor and pain. Thanks for all the work we have shared and the healing of the heart, Deena.

Incidental Comics

May 22

Wishes, Lies, and Dreams

Poetry Comics inspired by the work of Kenneth Koch

Lately I’ve been reading the books of poet Kenneth Koch, an acclaimed writer who brought poetry into elementary schools in the 1960s. The lessons he created led to deeply imaginative poems. He shares them in his books ROSE, WHERE DID YOU GET THAT RED

Grant Snider ∙ 171 LIKES

April Whalley

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May 22

Oh my goodness I enjoy your posts SO MUCH!

Kris Soebroto

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May 22

The color wheel prompt inspires me to play with my palette and draw my moods.

Sacred Word with Jaiya John

May 31

June 5 The Gathering virtual poetry / book reading ceremony

Get your tickets today and heal your heart and soul

Bless you, your circle, and all living things, Dear Soul, I am excited to join you next Wednesday, June 5 at 9am Pacific Daylight Time for our next virtual gathering as a part of my world tour, The Gathering, a poetry / book reading ceremony for collective freedom from oppression.

Dr. Jaiya John ∙ 3 LIKES

ONLY POEMS

Jun 2

Poetry Alter Egos, Poetic Freedom & more with Molly Zhu | Poet of the Week 6.2.24

10 poems & an interview with Passengers Journal editor and Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize winner

Free Submissions NOW OPEN for Poet of the Week and Poem of the Month Molly Zhu is a Chinese-American poet and attorney. She writes about alter egos, chasms, dreams, tears, rage, translation and the women in her life. She was twice nominated for Pushcart prizes and her work appears in

Karan Kapoor ∙ 11 LIKES

Conny Borgelioen

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Thank you for introducing this wonderful poet! I'll look forward to her collection of alter egos.

To a Green Thought

May 12

La Chimera

Alice Rohrwacher & film as poetry

A few quick notes to start: My new novel, Small Rain, is out on September 3. Please preorder it by asking at your local bookstore, or from your favorite online retailer. Here are a few links: Bookshop, Powells, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million, Amazon

Garth Greenwell ∙ 56 LIKES

Dylan Murphy

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May 12

I’m thrilled they released your version of What Belongs to You! I have listened to the other actors version - it was okay... I’ve listened to your Cleanness audiobook several times, and you have a certain sensitivity and rhythm that only comes from an intimate understanding of the text. Can’t wait to read (and then subsequently listen to) Small Rain!

Kim N

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May 25

I love how you point out how the film encompasses so many genres at once. I was struck by the alignment in the boat scenes to Titanic - with the flashes of the engine room, and the moment he flings the head of the statue into the water. Because what else would you do with a priceless artifact that has driven the plot while standing on the edge of a ship? Beautiful movie, thank you for the suggestion!

Sunshine Hunters

Jun 7

Nobody Wants to do the Dishes

A meditation on maintenance work, guided by Mierle Laderman Ukeles

There is nothing more infuriating to me than a growling stomach in the middle of a productive hour of writing. Before we get into it: I’m currently fundraising to help a family of 6 escape the war in Sudan! If you’ve gone out for coffee in the last week, if you have a very specific favorite pen that you loyally buy, if you’ve ever forgotten to cancel a …

Frankie Simmons ∙ 47 LIKES

Laura

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Not quite related to the post, but today I was weeding an area chock-full of invasives in my backyard, and I was trying to go relatively quickly because there’s so many of them, but I kept not getting all the roots, and the pace I was going at meant I wasn’t paying close enough attention to what were invasive roots and what weren’t (granted, sometimes they’re indistinguishable) so I ended up damaging some tree roots. I’d do this, feel bad & apologize to the tree, and then accidentally do the same thing a few minutes later.

I stopped for a sec and a) realized I had my hands in the ground but was completely in my head (like, the birds are always singing around my house and I couldn’t even remember paying attention in the last 20 minutes), and b) remembered you talking about listening to the earth & what she can teach us (I know this isn’t a new idea, you’re just whose words I remembered). I realized she was telling me to slow down, and that she needed me to be patient (which, as a chronically impatient person, was both ironic & needed).

Occasionally I’d speed back up, but then I’d remember that there was no point in trying to remove the invasives to prevent them from damaging the trees if I was just going to damage the trees myself (and then have the weeds grow back bc I didn’t get all the roots), and I’d ground myself again.

Earlier I thought “I feel like Frankie would like to know this”, and a few hours later I got the email that you’d posted, so here it is💗✨

Rose

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"The purpose of maintenance work is to give us a daily experience of being cared for." Really resonated with me and (as always) your writing's arrival into my life feels very timely. (I am currently sitting on my couch contemplating a messy room and procrastinating on getting started on my evening routine because it feels like a lot of work.)

Planet: Critical

Jun 10

Embracing Nature’s Complexity

Letting meaning run away with itself

The bias I have towards the world is a linguistic curve; I see words poking out of the soil among roots; poetry draped across the back of a chair as a lover plays with the hair of his sweetheart; words giggling in the silence, bunching themselves together like a flirtatious flock of sparrows. I believe humanity is a symbolic species, both liberated and …

Rachel Donald ∙ 40 LIKES

Tim MacDonald

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“We are...lost in a world that doesn’t make sense anymore”.

Yes. This resonates as true.

The social contract that is supposed to bind us all together, in society, through economy, is fundamentally flawed, and failing.

Our sociology of social choosing is incomplete.

Our social narrative of being human in an artificial world that we make for ourselves in which to live, through our technologies, out of the world of Nature into which we all are born, is obsolete.

Our times have changed, but we have not.

The stress points in society are being strained beyond their breaking point by the increasing tension between our out-of-date expectations and our right-for-our-times lived experiences.

“We need to rewild the commons”

Rather, we need to update and upgrade our expectations for what it means to be human in the world at the scale of the 21st Century.

We need to evolve our social narrative, fill out our sociology of social choosing and renegotiate our social contract.

The hard thing is, we need to start with Money. And Finance. And Fiduciary Money as a new kind of global commons, and fiduciary finance as a new point for social activism for holding our institutions of agency and authority to shape the enterprises that shape the technologies that shape the choices that shape the economy that shapes society and our human relationships with ourselves, with each other, with Nature and with the Future as the New Frontier for being human using money on a planetary scale in the 21st Century, and beyond.

Because we have lost our will to hold those institutions accountable for faithfulness in their institutional exercise of institutional power true to their institutional purposes.

And they have lost their way.

Richard Bergson

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Daniel Schmachtenberger was pointing out that the English language has vastly more nouns than languages from the indigenous tribes it supplanted. In doing so we separate one thing from another and from ourselves. He chooses Tree as an example. We freeze it in a constant form that denies its living nature, the uniqueness of each manifestation of its kind and its connection to the air and the soil and the flora and fauna that lives in and on it.

We need a different lexicon for a different view. Wildness and structure are not isolated states sitting at opposite ends of a spectrum but part of a story where they wind around each other in constant movement, shapeshifting, dissolving and remaking in successive iterations.

We need words that describe a process that doesn't stop, that don't try to tie it down to a specific form but allow for the infinite variety that life throws up and places us in the middle of it.

Austin Kleon

May 31

When you get confused

10 things worth sharing this week

Hey y’all, Here are 10 things I thought were worth sharing this week: I am deep into writing at the moment and I keep repeating to myself: “It doesn’t matter if it’s good right now. It just needs to exist.” “Better stop short than fill to the brim,” says the

311 LIKES

tania

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May 31

"When you get confused, ride your bike and listen to the music play"

There is a guy who rides his bike every weekday morning around 7am up (down?) my street playing music - hearing the music at the end of the street and rushing over to the window to hear what song he is playing today as he rides by, is one of the most beautiful parts of my day - it's magic :) as humans we touch each other in the smallest of ways that we will never know

Shawn Overos

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May 31

Thank you for mentioning Bill Walton . I was raised by my Hoosier father to follow the ethos of John Wooden and being raised in LA I remember rushing home from school to watch the Bruin games with Bill Walton. Also, in my home, Kareem Abdul Jabbar was a hero.

Poetry Unbound

Jun 2

On preparation

For the known and not known

Dear friends, I’ve visited people in hospitals, prisons, new homes, refuges, temporary homes, on the road, off the grid, at protests and parades, in times of shock, and times of ease. I know you have too. What are your rules for visiting? What do you tend to? Often, the more intense a setting for a visit, the more preparation I do: the first time I visi…

Pádraig Ó Tuama ∙ 171 LIKES

Janie Cook

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Jun 2

II am a teacher and so if I am to be good at my job, I must be prepared. I must have thought through the day's focus, the needs of the class, and be ready to guide the thinking and discussion around that focus. So, when I began an internship as a hospital chaplain, I had to learn an entirely different way to "prepare". I had to learn that I was prepared when I was totally empty of my own agenda. I had to prepare myself to truly listen and that reqruired making space within to receive whatever was about to be received. IF we are too full of ourselves, we have no internal availability to receive the other.

Wendy Haynes

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Jun 2

What a beautiful question. Thank you Padraig. Three things this week come to mind.

1. Preparing to visit a family after the unexpected death of their brother, a young man. I breathe and listen as I get the information from the funeral director and I take notes. I breathe again. I find out how many people will come to the meeting and who they are. 20. It's not usual to have that many people for a first meeting with a celebrant to discuss what rituals and ceremony are being called for. I welcome this 'grief circle' because this is how I imagine I can connect with so many folk. I create an outline, the words I will use to introduce myself. I hear whispers in the background of my mind. What will I say? How will I be with this family? What if it gets out of control? I breathe again. I offer myself self empathy. I check in for the shared needs that I imagine are present. Mourning. Safety. Connection. Understanding. I go gently with myself and trust I will know what to say. I will listen and guide and listen some more.

2. As I prepare to guide a mediation within a small company, I breathe as I start the preparations for the meeting by listening and offering empathy (both silent and spoken) to the key individuals. I note the points of connection that might become possible and the needs that I witness as being present both met and unmet needs. When I feel unsettled, I offer my concerned Wendy: self empathy. I hold myself close. I remind myself I am here to listen, to facilitate, to trust. I take time to listen to my own inner guidance of what I sense will be the best path forward within the skill base that I think we will all bring into the mediation circle.

3. Before my two grandchildren, 7 and 10, come over for the weekend... I breathe. I prepare by ensuring I have food in the house and their beds made. I rest up. I connect with my intention to play and hang out and to provide a safe place. I breathe a lot. This weekend, I was pushed and found a tired grandma lurking not too far beneath the surface. Sometimes that happens no matter how much I prepare. Best then to breathe, and call in grandpa support!

In this precious life how do I prepare?

Breathe mindfully... often, everyday.

Practice self empathy so I can live into the hard moments.

Practice deep listening and empathy with a sense of curiosity, an intention to connect, mindful presence, awareness of needs....

Connect with a friend.

Trust the sacredness of each moment... and don't take it all too seriously. Love.

Annie Finch's Poetry Witchery

Jun 9

When Is the Muse a Goddess?What is a Poet After All? And, Why I am Starting a Patreon Too!

How the Five Directions Changed Me Into a New Kind of Poet

Ishtar, a Goddess Associated with Inanna, c. 2200 BC Poetry was my first spiritual path. For a long time, the Muse was all the Goddess I knew, all the Goddess I needed. But gradually I began to realize that the Goddess was bigger than poetry for me. Did that mean that I left poetry? No. It meant that I enlargd poetry.

Annie Finch ∙ 5 LIKES

Richelle Lee Slota

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I love this discovery and rediscovery of ancient wisdoms of our deep humanity. I want to spend my life writing these ways.

The Newsletter with Lily Diamond

Jun 1

Your Poetry Fix: Sorrow Is Not My Name

This month's bonus (for everyone!).

Welcome to the Poetry Fix: Accessible to all subscribers this month only. HI My goal with The Newsletter is to offer writing and resources that make your life both gentler and more expansive through times of chaos and immersive challenge (aka always?). So in lieu of what I first imagined as a paid subscriber chat, I’m going to be sharing a monthly Poetry …

Lily Diamond ∙ 5 LIKES

CRAFT TALK

Jun 2

Day 2 of #1000wordsofsummer 2024

Yes, you can start today, and still catch up. Day 1 is here. This is a fundraiser so if you’re able, please subscribe. There is a FAQ which will hopefully answer all your questions about this project. There is a companion book and it is wonderful and helpful.

Jami Attenberg ∙ 203 LIKES

Laura Jamison

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Jun 2

“…to wring from the ether a never before imagined sequence of language that never would have existed if not for my being here at this precise moment, working against the eclipsing momentum of quotidian living—well, that is the magic I have known.”

Gorgeous and inspiring.

I was at the morning event yesterday and found that inspiring, too! Thanks for all you do, Jami.

Rachel Forrest

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Jun 2

I missed the first day due to a long travel day but I'm catching up and writing two today! I loved the Franz Wright quote. It reminded me of when I met him in college... let's see...oh, about 45 years ago.

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