A Blog of Seattle Arts & Lectures
By Karen Finneyfrock, WITS Writer-in-Residence There is a funny idea about inspiration that lurks in our culture. The idea holds that poets are just people who walk around, waiting to be struck by a fit of unexpected inspiration. We collectively imagine poets like hikers in the woods, and poetic inspiration a mountain lion watching silently, […]
By Arlene Naganawa, WITS Writer-in-Residence I love how poets use language in surprising, transformative ways, creating metaphors and images that we don’t often encounter in academic or journalistic writing. When I work with students, I encourage them to take leaps in their poems, to elevate their language. I don’t mean for students to use words […]
Writers, what is your deepest fear about your craft? On February 6, we hosted a reading with Seattle-born poet and current Utah Poet Laureate, Paisley Rekdal. During the Q&A with SAL’s Associate Director, Rebecca Hoogs, Paisley answered questions about her writing process and her new work, Nightingale, but it was this question about fear that followed her home: “What […]
Inspired by Sarah Kay’s “B” (or “If I Should Have A Daughter”) To my little chick, hidden away, not yet emergent, When you are born, your eyes will be planets reflecting the depths of the universe: moon-starer, they’ll call you, my young astronomer, a child of the stars. Chickadee, small and sweet, your feathers speckled […]
By Rebecca Hoogs, SAL Associate Director Born and raised in Seattle, Paisley Rekdal went to school at the University of Washington before continuing her studies at the University of Michigan and University of Toronto. She is now a professor at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, where it is surely sunnier and drier […]
Valentine there is a red-quilted heart-shaped box of chocolates sitting on my bedside and a pink envelope with my name on it written in a script that speaks secrets I will never spill even if the time comes that the script is all I have left to remember rain on a green ice cream […]
A brown tree and its rough bark a boar with big tusks shifting through leaves my grandma strolling me through a park Singapore, and how it had so many trees When I wake up, when it’s still dark The bitterness of sour candy My grandma buying me sweets my grandma’s room, it was dandy my […]
This essay is part of a series in which Poetry Northwest partners with Seattle Arts & Lectures to present reflections on visiting writers from the SAL Poetry Series. At 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, February 6, Paisley Rekdal will read at Hugo House. Tickets are still available! By Bill Carty, Senior Editor at Poetry Northwest Pythagoras’s greatest influence upon his […]
By Bianca Glinskas As an emerging poet, I’ve been a bit clueless when it comes to considering how profoundly my writing process affects my work. I type in front of screens in noisy cafes. I am guilty of planning my poems out before I write them. For me, this has served as a sort of […]
A photo of a girl Rosy cheeked and round Hangs on a wall in my house Arms spread wide and welcoming The perfect picture of childhood Of tire swings And clam bakes And playing pretend She worries about birds and cats and worms Sits on her porch swing Listens to her dad play guitar Savoring […]