Susan Rich takes inspiration in events and things that require her to—as she says— “leap out of myself,” which, perhaps, explains the diversity of her work. Rich, who will appear in two events on Saturday at the Massachusetts Poetry Festival, has traveled to places that require her to “get out of my comfort zone.” Human rights issues, springing from those places, are the subjects of many of her poems. But so are paintings.

“Speaking Pictures”

Rich’s presentation, “Speaking Pictures: Beyond Ekphrastic Workshop,” will take place in the Morse Auditorium of the Peabody Essex Museum. She believes visual art is fodder for the imagination. “It gives me a concrete place to start.” She explains that she began working with ekphrastic poetry when an image “stopped me in my tracks,” and she realized here was a subject that wasn’t beholden to her life or style.

Participants to Rich’s workshop will sharpen their powers of observation and write poems based on the current PEM exhibitions. Rich will be speaking in the museum at a time when there will be a grand exhibit of the Dutch Masters. “I won’t be directing the audience to necessarily work from those pieces of art, but they are a grand setting for a discussion of ekphrastic poetry.” The workshop will conclude with a reading by Rich.

The life of a poet

Rich will also be part of a panel that discusses the life of the poet. Other members of the panel are Jennifer Jean, Doug Holder, Aimee Nezhukumatathil and Ravi Shankar. Rich’s life as a poet has often involved travel. She has worked as a staff person for Amnesty International, an electoral supervisor in Bosnia Herzegovina, and a human rights trainer in Gaza and the West Bank. She lived in the Republic of Niger, West Africa as a Peace Corps Volunteer, and later moved to South Africa to teach at the University of Cape Town on a Fulbright Fellowship.

“I was in Bosnia twice in the ‘90s and a third time recently,” she says. Of course those places and the situation of their people affect what she has written. “I used to think I needed to travel to write,” but Rich’s empathy for the plight of others and her unique view of the world have found many ways to express themselves. Her poems range from Wendy making up her own mind about Peter Pan to a poem about a Muslim immigrant the day after 9/11 to looking for a sanctuary against the “gloss and grime” of a materialist world.

Check out a Rich poem below, and see more about her at her website.

Susan Rich’s poem

 Mohamud at the Mosque
– for my student, upon his graduation  

And some time later in the lingering
blaze of summer, in the first days
after September 11th you phoned –

if I don’t tell anyone my name I’ll
pass for an African American.
And suddenly, this seemed a sensible solution –

the best protection: to be a black man
born in America, more invisible than
Somali, Muslim, asylum seeker –

Others stayed away that first Friday
but your uncle insisted that you pray.
How fortunes change so swiftly

I hear you say. And as you parallel
park across from the Tukwila
mosque, a young woman cries out –

her fears unfurling beside your battered car
Go back where you came from!
You stand, both of you, dazzling there

in the mid-day light, her pavement
facing off along your parking strip.
You tell me she is only trying

to protect her lawn, her trees,
her untended heart – already
alarmed by its directive.

And when the neighborhood
policeman appears, asks
you, asks her, asks all the others –

So what seems to be the problem?
He actually expects an answer,
as if any of us could name it –

as if perhaps your prayers
chanted as this cop stands guard
watching over your windshield

during the entire service
might hold back the world
we did not want to know.