Renewed Attention to Poetry (It is April, after all!)

I started this blog the year before my first child was born, in 2005. I posted every poem I had written up to that point, and created a small selection of my favorite poets and some websites with collections of poetry. Then, over the years I wrote a series of "I'm really going to start writing again! Check back soon!" posts, that never lead to anything. LOL! (I've deleted some of those - 😂). But recently, I've joined an virtual spiritual space where one of the many conversations is around poetry and there's a great group of writers who meet once a week just to write. Not to critique one another, just write. And its inpsired me. I've written for 20 minutes a week since I joined. Not much, but a start. And I've come away with what Anne Lamott would call "shitty first drafts", but hope to slowly turn them into poems. (I suppose I really should have waited to write that last line in the past tense AFTER having written them, to avoid having to delete again, but here we are.)

 I've discovered several new poets over the years, some of my favorites being the late Andrea Gibson, and her widow, the gifted and genrous and gracious Megan Falley. (I highly suggest you visit her Instagram and find the reels she's made with short and sweet and utterly lovely tips for refining your poetry. (If you haven't seen Come See Me In The Good Light, you must! You can get a free trial of Apple TV for a week. But you'll want to renew it to watch this documentary about the last year of Andrea's life over and over. (I've also watched every interview and panel every single one of the people involved with the movie have done!) Sara Bareillis and Brandi Carlile gathered some of Andrea's last pieces of poetry to compose a beautiful song that plays at the end of the movie, Salt,Then Sour,Then Sweet . 

I'm also quite tickeled to be from Massachusetts, where our poet laureate (we finally have one!) is Regie Gibson. Seeing him at an event recently, and then getting to talk to him about many things, including his friend Andrea Gibson, has also helped renew my love for poetry. If anyone is reading this, I'd love to know who your favorite poets are! And if you have poetry of your own online, drop a link in the comments! Happy Poetry Month!