A Blog of Seattle Arts & Lectures
Falling Angel My father stands by my side listing rule after rule after rule. I roll my eyes and shun his words of caution as he straps on my wings. The wings are big and white. I secretly threaded a raven feather for luck. I look toward the blazing sun and spread my wings and […]
Open Books: A Poem Emporium, Seattle’s beloved poetry-only bookstore, has been celebrating National Poetry Month like mad all April. If you’ve missed the first three weeks of contests, prompts, parties, and displays, you have one more week – and so many ways – to celebrate National Poetry Month alongside them and to support this local, independent treasure. […]
By Kathleen Flenniken, WITS Writer-in-Residence A friend of a friend was looking for a poem her fifth-grade son could memorize for a class project. The question came to me and I made a couple of suggestions. The boy chose “Eating Poetry” by Mark Strand. His mother sent a photo of him studying the poem with […]
By: Karen Finneyfrock, WITS Writer-in-Residence A few weeks ago, it snowed in Seattle! That’s a pretty exciting occurrence for inhabitants on the Puget Sound. Students got a snow day, followed by a late start. Since I was scheduled to teach in fourth grade classrooms at Lafayette Elementary, I knew I would need to work a […]
By Sierra Nelson, WITS Writer-in-Residence I first encountered Alice Notley’s work seeing her read in Seattle for the Rendezvous Reading Series cosponsored by Subtext. It was 1999. It was Hugo House, which had just barely hatched. I was in my mid-20’s, not even hatched, in my first larval year of an MFA, second year performing […]
Last week, WITS Writer Daemond Arrindell shared a powerful poem with us written by Marylou Gomez, his partner teacher at South Lake High School. The whole SAL staff was moved by her words and the purpose they hold. As we try to balance on the fast-shifting political landscape, it seems more and more necessary, either […]
By Gabrielle Bates I feel like a different type of tenderness might be emerging.—Ross Gay When Ross Gay read for the SAL Poetry Series last week, it was exactly what I needed. I dare say it was exactly what we all needed. All of us streaming into that auditorium from the cold—carrying our bodies quickly, […]
Untitled Tags Rest in Peace to Mike Brown 17-year-old graduate shot down In the middle of the street For a swisher sweet Complete chaos no peace When will we reach that day That day we don’t see color That day where we can all call each other sisters and brothers All across the globe we […]
Holy the first breath you take and the last exhale of your life, Holy the song stuck in your head, Holy from a hug to a kiss to love, Holy the new jeans you bought, Holy when you looked better in the picture, Holy from the speed talker to the stutterers, Holy the anger passing […]
By Jeanine Walker, WITS Writer-in-Residence By the time this post is published, we will have endured several tens of other injustices, threats on our freedoms, and evasions from the new presidential administration, and the idea of “alternative facts” will, I imagine, be filed under the Folder of Growing Insanities—which is to say, not quite forgotten […]