Category: Poetry

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Poetry Pals Reading Group: After 15 Months Together

Long before lockdown and a raging pandemic, I wanted to invite a Poetry Reading Circle. So seldom did I finish an entire collection. With others, I’d be motivated! It seemed a fun way to gather with people I like.

Our reads–May 2020-August 2021!

One morning last April, I sent the invite. A bit disappointed at first because my “local” friends offered scant reply, I reached out to three old friends on the East Coast: Within 15 minutes, two of them replied enthusiastically.

Yippee! We were set to begin! Four wild reading women felt like plenty for our virtual gathering!

We first read Indigo by Ellen Bass. Julie, my co-conspirator in Portland, chose our second month’s read: Paige Lewis’ debut, Space Struck. As months passed, other women joined us. Some stayed, others were swept away by life’s obligations.

By May of 2021, a year later and most of us vaccinated, one of the East Coast originals—Stacey—suggested we pause for a Retrospective.

Continue reading “Poetry Pals Reading Group: After 15 Months Together”
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The Zen of Forgetting

“Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries.
Without them, humanity cannot survive.”

— Dalai Lama XIV, The Art of Happiness

I met this week’s guest-blogger, Cassy Soden, at Elk Plain Elementary School–when I was eight years old. Though it wasn’t until after college we grew close, we had worked together on Bravetalk, the high school newspaper. We played basketball on the same team at Bethel Junior High. Tomorrow is Cassy’s birthday! Though I’d love to be up in Seattle eating sushi with her at her celebration, publishing her story on L.I.T. is the next best.

Cassy Soden is a multimedia producer, writer, and story strategist. A story maven and student of the art of storytelling, her focus is to document and tell stories that reflect people’s inspiring passions. She seeks to make known stories that create learning opportunities, encourage positive change, and deepen cultural understanding.

I hope you will enjoy the personal and powerful post and poetry she has written for us. You will find an invitation, too–in her conclusion. I appreciate so much that she has offered to share this experience with us, an experience that will certainly touch many lives.

DSC03150BloomMarch stirs with rain, wind, and glimpses of the sun. It is a time when the wet Northwest blooms and vibrant colors pop against gray skies. It is against this backdrop that for many years my dad and I celebrated our birthdays with a communal cake. I remember wishing him a happy half-century birthday. Now, on the dawn of this same age, it is so strange to be here myself, my father’s life a lesson carved into my heart.

Two years ago instead of a birthday celebration we held a memorial service for my dad, Terry. In attendance was a special person, Penny, who knew my dad for only a short time but had become an important lifeline and ally in the final years of his life. Continue reading “The Zen of Forgetting”

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Risk, Reveal, Relate: The Poetry Circle Goes to Manzanita

“A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer,
it sings because it has a song.”

Maya Angelou

 

IMG_20150126_124136Last year my friend Stacey Hill told me she’d begun a ritual of gathering herself up three words to guide her for the year. She challenged me to do the same, and I did. But, by 2015 I’d already forgotten our new “ritual”. Stacey, of course, was on top of it, and I found a good old-fashioned letter in my mailbox: She announced her three words–“C” words.

“What are yours?” she wrote.

Finally, weeks later, mine woke me in the night–“R” words this time.

In the morning, they were still in my mind, so I texted Stacey. (No time for the old-fashioned letter, I wanted to tell her NOW.)

Only minutes after I’d sent the text, my phone rang–or, rather, sang.

“I love your words!” said Stacey. Which made me happy, and I asked her about her own, and we talked about the mountains of snow that kept her home from school for yet another day–as she drove her car home.

“Hang on a minute, Deb. The plow truck’s in my way!” Her driving in post-blizzard Massachusetts had me feeling nervous–but that’s another story.

Yes, in 36 inches of snow, this New Englander was talking to me (hands free, of course) while she drove home from a cafe! Continue reading “Risk, Reveal, Relate: The Poetry Circle Goes to Manzanita”

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Certainty, Insanity in Paris

“We are still shocked by what has happened, but we will never give up our values. Our response is more democracy, more openness, and more humanity… We will answer hatred with love.”

Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg

More than a million people demonstrated for peace on the streets of Paris–40 presidents and prime ministers from around the world, leaders from diverse religions, ordinary people like you or me–and they marched together to show solidarity against a latest act of terrorism..

This outcry comes after 17 people died this week from an outrageous assault on the staff of the satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo. The writers and cartoonists dared to express themselves. The attackers did not agree with the magazine’s editorial decisions and chose to kill the people who held and shared opinions unlike their own. Continue reading “Certainty, Insanity in Paris”

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Get L.I.T.! Saying Goodbye to 2014

“To like many people spontaneously and without effort is perhaps the greatest source of all personal happiness.”

Bertrand Russell
(favorite reminder-words of the year!)

 

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Kalaloch, Pacific Coast, Washington

It’s been a world of L.I.T. in 2014–Lives Inspiring Today.

Thanks to each of you who have traveled along. It’s been a pleasure to notice and note so many people who are making a difference in our world–and doing good stuff.

From friends Julie Buccerri and Stacey Hill in Massachusetts who are teaching kids to think and act with care, to the many poets who invite us to feel and see in ways we might not otherwise–Peg Edera, Esther Elisabeth, Carolyn Norred, Sarah Kinsel, Glenna Cook and John Fox: Thanks for letting me talk with you, for letting me write about you, and for letting us feature your work.

When I look back over the months, it is fun to see some of the people I’ve met this year- Continue reading “Get L.I.T.! Saying Goodbye to 2014”

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Poetry: Writing Our Relationship with Trees

“What we are doing to the forests of the world

is but a mirror reflection of what we are doing

to ourselves and to one another.”

Mahatma Gandhi

Cape D 2011 070Not long ago, John Fox led a poetry writing workshop in Portland, Oregon. The theme, “Writing Our Relationship With Trees” seemed ho-hum–until I attended.

During these two days I witnessed the wonder of words and sharing that happened as John offered prompts, read poems by Wendell Berry, Jane Hirshfield and Naomi Shihab Nye–and invited the rest of us to write and share.

It’s amazing what can happen when we sit to write about and with these tall lives from deep root to branches–and when we write from our memories associated with maple, cedar, apple and pear. Trees help us to breathe, yet how often do we stop to contemplate their impact?

This week I want to share some of the writing from that weekend by Carolyn Norred, Esther Elizabeth and Peg Edera–all poets who have been previously featured on L.I.T..

On the second day of the weekend-workshop, we gathered around a near-by Red Cedar. If you haven’t leaned against one of these giants lately Continue reading “Poetry: Writing Our Relationship with Trees”