Hi everyone. How are you doing these days? Surviving? Possibly thriving? Looking without and within and taking stock? Do you feel yourself changing in ways you didn’t expect? Maybe windows are blowing open in your mind and heart the way they are in mine. One thing certain in a world of upheaval is that storytelling … Continue reading Fall workshops just scheduled!
My poems podcast, Words by Winter, can be found here. When I bought my house, its little city sloping front yard was scrubby grass. Every year I dug holes and stuck perennials into them. Now there’s no grass left, just phlox and coneflowers and bee balm and Russian sage and baby’s breath and lilies and balloon flowers … Continue reading Poem of the Week, by Camille T. Dungy
An older man with a cane came to my front yard poetry hut a couple weeks ago. Big smile. Lively eyes. He thanked me for all the new poets he’d found over years via the poetry hut and we began talking about his favorite Minnesota poets. He was handsome in the same tall lean way … Continue reading Poem of the Week, by Kari Gunter-Seymour
My dog and I often walk past a house being built on Lake of the Isles. For two years now I’ve watched this house take shape from a staked hole in the ground to the beamed stone and frame beauty it’s becoming. A craftsman built curved and arched stone walls by hand, hefting each rock … Continue reading Poem of the Week, by Stephen Dunn
The photo on the right is one of a bunch of family photos in my living room. Is that your daughter? people sometimes ask, and I smile. She does look like me, doesn’t she? I say. But the girl on the windsurfer is me, long ago, back in a life I used to live: a … Continue reading Poem of the Week, by Maggie Smith
My poems podcast, Words by Winter, can be found here. I’m a self-taught maker of extremely imprecise, freeform story quilts that I hand-quilt and then embroider. This morning as I flicked around the internet looking for cool hand-quilt block patterns, the word “quilt” suddenly looked entirely wrong. Too short, too abrupt, missing one or more letters, and … Continue reading Poem of the Week, by Robert Francis
My poems podcast, Words by Winter, can be found here. One afternoon when I was twenty-six I left South High School and jumped into my little red car. Turned on the music –was it a tape?–as loud as it would go. Maybe Annie Lennox, maybe Joan Armatrading. Stopped at the red light on Cedar and 22nd, waited … Continue reading Poem of the Week, by Nikki Giovanni
My poems podcast, Words by Winter, can be found here. Think up a person, I tell the zoom room, like a toddler with wild red curls. Hands go up. People emerge. Now give me an object, like a ceramic pit bull. Objects appear. We write them all down, column A and column B. Now put one from … Continue reading Poem of the Week, by Joy Harjo
My poems podcast, Words by Winter, can be found here. The world is too big if you make it so. This sentence has been running through my head lately. Every time I feel besieged by the world’s problems, which is most of the time, it comes back to me. This morning the dog and I got up … Continue reading Poem of the Week, by Ellen Bass
My poems podcast, Words by Winter, can be found here. Whenever I pass a baby on the sidewalk our eyes meet and hold. Babies turn their heads to keep holding that gaze, sometimes all the way to the end of the block. They want to examine me, so they do. This is what I most appreciate about … Continue reading Poem of the Week, by Laura Gilpin
Goodies from my mailbox and camera
Telling all sides of the parenting story
Waking Up to Your Dreams
On James Baldwin and Diverse Literature
Putting those recalcitrant toddler cancer cells to bed...
your own PDK for writing
a collection of beautiful words.....
Objects, Memory and Meaning
If it can't be said in a hundred words, then it can't be said in a thousand.
sewing a handmade wardrobe
"drink from the well of your self and begin again" ~charles bukowski
Musings on poetry, language, perception, numbers, food, and anything else that slips through the cracks.
Thoughts on the world around me
the literary asylum
