When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems?I recall nursery rhymes my mother would read and learning to recite Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” in elementary school. I think the encounter that was a...
Self-portrait of my poems as the Fall by Serena Yang every day the birds come to knock their beaksagainst the glass, thinking it air. every day my penscratches over the water-stained pages of my notebookand thinks itself a vein. my blood turning to ink.a measured...
driving while black by Mwatabu S. Okantah It is not what you call me,it is what I answer to…—African Proverb driving in my carblack wisdom from the ages is turned on its head: in my carwhat i think of my Self is of no significance(save in my own mind…)because i am...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? I read dead poets and wrote a lot of blushingly bad poetry on a manual typewriter in high school, and then in college I lucked into a series of poetry classes with Chris...
Poets Laureate Across Massachusetts A note from the interviewer, Alice Kociemba Porsha Olayiwola, the city of Boston’s current Poet Laureate, reflects on how a local laureate can become an advocate for poetry in schools and in correctional institutions, certainly...
the Andes speak of death and 2020 by Isabella Ramirez i. April 2020, southern hemispherethe Andes seem awfully quiet these days.Cotopaxi no longer writhes magma now that the streets have become volcanic.my mother sends condolences to people in Guayaquil who...
It was the lightning… by Sean Mahoney …and wife telling me she has to isolatefor 14 days due to an apparent exposure to Covid-19 at the hospital. She sat on concrete just where the rise meets the flatat the end of the driveway. The Impreza running with the bright...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? I still have a childhood copy of Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses, but it was an English class in high school with Ms. Benz where I truly fell in love with...
Poets Laureate Across Massachusetts A note from the interviewer, Alice Kociemba Rather than answer individual questions, Steven Ratiner described his overall plans and initiatives as Arlington’s third poet laureate. While reading about Steven’s Red Letter Poem...
The Inscrutable Illness of Things by Satya Dash My grandmother often in bouts of angerturned stone pink in silence, quietlyremarking: it’s impossible to silencesilence. It took me years to understandmy awe for the way she could deal a nounits own verb. I think about...
Poets Laureate Across Massachusetts A Note from the Interviewer, Alice Kociemba Like many towns across the Commonwealth who have established a poet laureate position, participating in the life of the community includes not only writing an occasional poem, but also...
Sickness by Jennifer Perrine We never married, thought it too quaint, too ball and chain. Fixed, pinned. We rejected being yoked like oxen, caged together in that hallowed zoo. And yet, we dreamt of a honeymoon, every place we’d explore, were money no object: north...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? I didn’t really know I was interested in poetry and in literature until partway through my time at Wellesley College. When I arrived, I truly didn’t have a sense that I had any...
Let’s Go to Heaven by Mary Birnbaum A name halo winks on your chest. Your heart chakra is open for business. A deck of Tarot cards fans your heated face.Out jumps an angel, smiling, handing outwings that fold neatly under T shirts. I am...
Argo, My Argo by Tawanda Mulalu The mirror’s clubfooted,not me. Afro’s gone Medusa again. Every coil’s its own Hydra.I’m adventuring with a comb. The sink’s full of myths...The myths are growing... Everyday I find myselfsmaller with effort, my life’s lightwith every...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems?My first exposure to poetry was the children’s book, HOP ON POP by Dr. Seuss. I fell in love with the bouncy rhythm of the text and asked my parents to read it over and over and...
Getting to Know Anne Whitehouse & Her New Book, Outside From the Inside
Poets Laureate Across Massachusetts A note from the interviewer, Alice Kociemba Poetry has become an integral part of the social fabric of Northampton and its surrounding towns. I had heard about Northampton’s local-poem-in-every-menu during restaurant week before...
The Dandelion Speaks of Survival Quintin Collins When they see me rise, a nebula of coronas, sun-burst spires strewn among their bluegrass lawns,they will come for me. When my roots fan a mazearound their chrysanthemums, interlace a cagearound their petunias, grab the...
Hope by Tamara Fricke these are dismal times;the rent is late, bills go unpaid, bleakness swaddles apathy like a new born and nurses overwhelming fear. tenderness, so easily forgotten,gets lost in the empty refrigerator or tossed out with the spoilt milk. it’s easy to...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? I was lucky to grow up in a house where poetry and storytelling were loved. My father knew lots of poems by heart and lines of poetry, in both Urdu and Persian, were frequently...