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...
Poets Laureate Across Massachusetts Meet Juan Matos, Worcester’s Poet Laureate When did your city or town decide to establish a poet laureate position? Is there a length of time the poet laureate serves?Distinguish poet, Gertrude Halstead, was Worcester’s first Poet...
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...
There Are No Unsacred Spaces by Cynthia Manick I’m trying to tell you that the world is beautiful. All thehellos we say in a week, or month, the way the groovesof the grin know what to do. Think about the first timeman went from four legs, hairy knuckles folded over,...
Because the world has its own version of solace by Amy Dryansky in a field of decapitated corn stalkson the corner of Reed’s Bridge and Elma flock of wild turkeys scratchedas if something nourishing remainedbetween the rows of dry stubble.They interrupted a...
Retreat to Saint Leo Abbey by Michael Angel Martín When a long-loosened windshield Wiper snaps off the bumperless Mazda And gets snatched up into a night-storm Erupting on the drive’s final stretch,I don’t think I’ll make it. But I do, Even if hours past compline....
Poets Laureate Across Massachusetts A note from the interviewer, Alice Kociemba I remember the surveys the Mass Poetry Festival team would send out to gauge the impact the festival had on Salem’s economy (Did you stay in a hotel? Did you eat in a restaurant? Did you...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? My first encounter must have been with nursery rhymes, but my earliest recollection of poetry is of my mother reciting A.A Milne’s “Disobedience,” a poem that begins, “James...
Abecedarian for the Future by Ada Limón All the old gray gods have fallenback to their static realms of mythcleared from the benches, thrones,dragged kicking to their stone tombs,each one grizzled by their swift exilefrayed, bedraggled, forced to kneel,give up their...
Signs by Anne Whitehouse A brief April snow disrupted our spring.Amid clumps of snow, daffodilsnodded in the icy breeze. A glaze of snowflakes sugared the hyacinths. I worried for them and the tender lettuces,red and green, I’d only just planted.But the sun came out;...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? In the early 1970’s, while home from college for the summer, I took a summer writing class at Berkshire Community College, with Ron Atkinson (author of Looking for My Name). He...
Poets Laureate Across Massachusetts A note from the interviewer, Alice Kociemba Poetry has a natural kinship with music, story telling, and theater, as Magdalena Gómez, Poet Laureate of Springfield keenly appreciates. In this second spotlight on the Commonwealth’s...
Barely There by Julia Story I had touched the weepingbirch in the cemetery so manytimes that there was a smallmark, a grease mark or wornplace where my hand hadrested, trying to feel thespinning that connected itto some invisible undergroundpathway. The cranial...
Poets Laureate Across Massachusetts A note from the interviewer, Alice Kociemba Many years ago now, I attended a panel discussion at a Mass Poetry Festival in Salem by New England poets laureate from Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island and Connecticut. Sadly,...