A Blog of Seattle Arts & Lectures
Que significa ser bilingue A lot of people think, it can be easy La dificultad sigue Want to practice on a daily basis I just wanted to talk to them Nomas una conversación I want to hear their stories Porque no tomas el acción Why don’t you study? Porque te cuesta Your family came to […]
the lady in the elevator called, “look at that rainbow!” and we all did, sticking our necks out past the doors to get a good look. we are so starved for pretty things. but there was no rainbow, only the faintest smudge of purple against the cotton fluff of clouds spread across the sky like […]
Ode to Pitbulls Given a bad name Sweet as honeydew melon So violent everyone says not even in the top five Gone through more than imaginable Pity the pitbull Lonely star in the night sky Everywhere I look there are pitbulls chained and muzzled But what about the others Abused like the trees we tear […]
Words by Danielle Palmer-Friedman, illustration by Madeline Kernan “Everything is always bits and pieces,” Naomi Shihab Nye writes in I’ll Ask You Three Times: Are You OK? As soon as I saw that sentence, I stopped what I was doing and started reading. It’s a beautiful thing when an author’s words succinctly express a feeling […]
By Rebecca Hoogs, SAL Associate Director It is an honor to welcome Naomi Shihab Nye back to the Poetry Series, ten years after her last appearance. In the last year alone, she added a new title to her bio: the Young People’s Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation, and a new title to her shelf, […]
It’s the tree that fills me with serenity. the green that towers me with hope. the roots that surround me in the twists and turns of sound. those roots that have grown to help me find mine. the limbs that make me long for touch. the smell that brings me back to that safety. It’s […]
Listen—we can’t all be a rocker, a genius lyricist, a Bohemian New Yorker, a style icon, and an award-winning author. That particular blend of legendary is reserved for Patti Smith, and we on the SAL staff are just her acolytes. So if you, too, find it impossible to achieve even “Step 1” on this how-to […]
This essay is part of a series in which Poetry Northwest partners with Seattle Arts & Lectures to present reflections on visiting writers from SAL’s 2019/20 Poetry Series. At 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, September 19, Naomi Shihab Nye will read in celebration of her new collection The Tiny Journalist at Town Hall Seattle, and Lena Khalaf Tuffaha will […]
You know when someone says, “Oh, you have to read this book,” and you respond, “Oh, it’s on my list!”—and then you just. Never. Read. It? Maybe the bandwagon just isn’t your wagon. Or maybe you’re preoccupied by all the other books out there (a lazy Google search tells us there are 129,864,880 books to […]
by Kate Jones, Summer Intern Another wonderful summer has come and gone, and I’m looking at my finished Summer Book Bingo board, trying to articulate why I love this experience so much. I’m no Book Bingo veteran—this is only my second card—but I’m starting to boil it down to a few reasons, reasons that […]