 first of all, and thank you to Kellogg-Hubert Library and Poem City. This has been such an amazing event every year. This year is the first time we got our entire flow group together to read. We've always had someone missing, so this is kind of exciting to have all of us. Poetry, process, and perspective. We are all going to read or talk to you a little bit about an element of being in a group, and then also read our poems one at a time. So for those who have never heard us before, flow stands for four left, one right, W-R-I-T-E. I invited everyone together to form a poetry group, and as we were doing our first exercise, I was finished first, and I looked around, and I was like, they're all left-handed. I'm right-handed, but they're all left-handed. So I was like, oh my goodness, we have a name for our group. Four left, one right, and we just shortened it. acronym, flow. So that's who we are. And we are going to start with, oops, sorry, Susie Atwood, who is going to be reading. She was in Central Vermont, and she practices therapy, wilderness guiding, and writing poems about the convergence of human beings in the untamed world. She has a master's degree in education and counseling, and has taught writing at the high school and college level. And it's also a very good person. Susie? And thank you for coming to support Home City, which is such a great event every year, and to come and see us read, which feels special too. So as Jesse said, we're all going to speak to some aspect of what it means to be in a group together. We've been together eight years, and there was nothing more gratifying than being asked to talk about inspiration. It's just I've been walking around with that for some weeks thinking, and I probably could have written a book by now, but you know, it's like one minute. And so inspiration at its root means to breathe into or put spirit into. And in our group, it is kind of the background or the breath of our work together as a group. The poet, Biswa Shiborska, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1996, said that described inspiration as whatever it is, it is born from a continuous I don't know. And which is such a beautiful piece, and you know, it's that root of curiosity I don't know. But I believe a poem is an answer to the question that follows I don't know what is this. We encounter all kinds of facets of reality and our inner experience. And if you have the writer's eye or the poet's eye, you would just go, well, what is this? And then you try to find the words. So in a writing group, what we do is witness each other on that journey of what is this? And I think that, you know, it's a deeply personal question for each of us that we hold. And so often, how we reflect on each other's writing is that we hold the thing that we're trying to express, each of us as sacred. So that when we're critiquing a poem, we're very, very careful to work around clarifying the very sacred thing that each person is trying to develop. So that is kind of, I think, the heart and soul of that inspiration. In addition, we extend appreciation and affection for each other. And so there's this very lovely container that we hold for each other that celebrates our sort of individual and unique curiosity about the world. And then collectively, we are able to, I don't know, show up for ourselves and each other pretty much consistently doing the work. So that's what I'm going to say about inspiration. My guess is that if anybody else in our group spoke to inspiration, they would say something different and beautiful. So the first poem I'm going to read was a little over a year ago, I think, when Ukraine War was just coming on the horizon. And it's called Spring. I can't quite name the moment when this season invited hesitation, fear even, of a world bereft of care orbiting toward war. Yet like it or not, spring calls me to my yard, where rake in hand I see green shoots appear amid the snowmelt forcing up through frozen ground. A robin with its bright eye head cocked descends to see if I have scratched up anything worth eating. Time marked now by budding bird song and nearly empty wood pile. At the hearth a dying flame outside an earthy breeze prevails. And the robin keeps singing, keeps singing. This next group of poems relates back to a place I lived not too long ago that was called Milk Moon Farm. And the title, this is short, this is a very short poem, the title of which is The Milk Moon is the May Moon. The Milk Moon is the May Moon. The Milk Moon is the mantle moon washing the green upwelling of seed, leaf and blade and pale shimmer. A long restful breath held overnight, seeding to sun, bud and paddle, delighting the ruminant tongue, filling the silky udder, suckling the young. This next one is also about the same place. It's called Leaving. It is June. I'm waking early. Lilac wraps the porch in scent and purple. The rose throws pink along the wall. A finch has shifted to the vacant robin's nest and fawns step lightly through the grass below the barn. Leaving Milk Moon Farm, the green knoll of hayfields, trees and private spaces, ringed by hills rising up to mountains, the long views gracing coupe and pen, summoning bees to journey from the hive. I pack boxes, sweep, give away the books and tools this dream was made from, give away the hands. Now tracking something closer, deeper and find, I've been created here, broken and opened by my labor's Milk Moon and I. I didn't move very far. This next poem was, it's about freedom. Reflecting on the freedom of humans and of animals. And I think I was thinking about detainees and incarceration and just kind of all came together. And this is called Barbed Wire. I left a dream behind, resettling just above the old milk house, south of the hayfields in among a stand of pines bound together by barbed wire, no cows to keep in now. Three rusty scarring strands embedded deep in bark, fur pinched here and there from astonished deer who left an in mid air felt its spiteful sting. I pulled on leather gloves and spent an afternoon snipping it away, restoring a chore of undoing as so many chores in fall become the wires metal thorns cutting the brow of the living land, sorrowful evidence of a need to detain, confine. Some would argue necessary, yet those who leap would disagree. And my final poem, which somebody told me I read last year, but I had no evidence of that. And it is actually the poem this year that sits on Main Street somewhere down the way here. And in this poem, I like because it's about our group. It's about our writing group. And it's called Water Bellen. I think of sweetness and the sharing of it on a humid morning in August, cricket call and croissant sitting on a rain soaked porch with women who know bitter and sweet, know how to tell it, laugh to some of us who've nearly died. No guarantee that every day is sweet. But this morning, we are tasting it. Thank you. Now I get to introduce our next writer poet, Mary Elder Jacobson, who I believe lives in Calis. I have her short bio from the which is very out of date, enjoys both the work and the play of writing. Her poems have appeared in print and online publications and elsewhere for well years. She lives in North Calis. And she is a very dedicated poet and is increasingly getting published widely. So we're very happy to have you here. Thanks everybody for coming. Jesse started this group and she just sort of always keeps us on her toes and raises the bars. And not only do we have to talk about an aspect of our practice, but we have to read our poems and we have to introduce some experts. All of them are certain. So let's see. My first task is to talk about an element of our practice and I have been given critique. And critique in our critique is different than criticism. I think we really know that. And it's really too faceted. It has to do with giving feedback to someone and also receiving feedback. And how do you do that? You try to be fair. You try to do unto others. You try to do the medical and hypocriticals of first do no harm. And see what else I wanted to say here. Yeah, it's just involves whether you're giving or receiving caring, honesty, being brave and forthcoming and also being silent, focusing on what works to guide the writer to her own determinations about revision, sometimes offering a solution and sometimes refraining. So that's critique for you. I didn't know who would be here today. But I chose my first poem because I think there are things that we all have in common. And I know that many people in this room have them. Which is if I asked you these questions, you would probably say yes, which is have you felt loss in the past few years? Have you felt a loss of ritual in the past few years? Have you felt that you've been tossing in a storm? Have you lost a loved one? This poem, oh, have you reached a milestone age that maybe ends with a zero? So I think everybody in this room probably could answer yes to some of those, if not all. This poem is called Animal Stories and it was written for a friend who turned one of those big ages that ends with a zero, who experienced many of those things in the past year. And like coming back to poem city and being in the library, it was an occasion poem that was about barn party. So you can imagine that you're in a barn when I read this. Animal Stories, Barn Party, your mom. Well, friends, here we are again. How many heartbeats has it been since we were last shepherded in to the same shared space together? Once some years back, one old friend was dumbstruck to see inside this barn, a spread of fancy foods and guests in party dress, the crowd that couldn't begin to fill it up from the stalls below to the loft above. This farmer gasped and gawked and squawked. For God's sake, put some animals in this place. Well, friends, here we are again. We may not be a flock of sheep, herd of cattle, or litter of pigs, but haven't we all gladly sucked our mother's teats, laid down in grass, peed in moonlight or eaten scraps? Maybe most stories of creatures not just surviving but thriving, outlasting storms and floating forward into the future. Oh, a debt to Noah and his well wrought boat and to his wife. Let's give her a line and even say her name. Mama. Isn't there more to every story? How this old barn is not a boat, and we're not sailing over water. But aren't we all of us a float? So how is it we stay buoyant? Let's flesh the story out. Besides the Ark and Noah the carpenter, his helpmate and the messenger dove. Let's not forget the animals themselves and the lessons of their living. How they kept a lookout for one another, pulled out splinters with their teeth, licked each other's wounds, groomed the fur and preamed the feathers of their fellow animal friends, then snuggled side by side for warmth through long stretches of chill and dark and damp and even cracked some jokes to make each other laugh and just kept on keeping on telling and retelling their own animal stories until the sun came out again. This poem is called On Plain Air, which many of you may know as the French phrase for in open air and reversed painting outside or sketching outside. And to jump off from the farmer, it begins with a plow. Maybe it's a John Deere, I don't know. On Plain Air, the plow draws furrows and contour lines across the hillside from north to south. As yellow, ochre, umber leaves fall from trees, curling downward like fine pencil sheathes. And sun lost in her own gradation studies lays down her graphite marks by depth degrees dark and darker, darker still until her long thin shadows from ridgeline trees have sewn the fields with cross hatched strokes. She smudged from west to east at end of day, highlighting her landscape in such enviable ways. The artist can only dream of mimicking one day or on a topic of shadows in there. I'm going to read a poem called Shadows. One thing that I sort of love to do myself if I've ever what I have taught or anything, it's I thought I need a really good exercise to not write from the point of view of yourself, but to write from the point of view of someone or something else. So this poem is from the point of view of shadows, shadows, without a peep, deep from the yawning barns ink black silhouette, we see on asleep. We spill in silence in puddles in every shape of dark. We curl up tight at her feet and wake to pat about all the proverbial cats pacing the path as mute as the marks beneath cats practiced pause and one to be reading these with the scoop because they all existed earlier, but now different. All right, this one I'm going to ask for a little audience participation. This poem is about bees. And it's also about being captivated. So I hope that you'll be captivated by the words. And then the poem ends with the words plum trees. So two beats plum trees. And after I say plum trees, if you could just wait two weeks, like the poem, plum trees, and then everybody. Let me hear what you got. It's a peaceful summer day. And you're not frightened. It's an us warm beekeeping. Once we kept bees and hives, or they kept us, kept us mesmerized, kept us drunk on the end lines, dazed and dizzy by road sides, kept us fellbound in fields dusted and pollen, all of us kept us out in those downpours and pedals humming and orchards kept us fed on ambrosia, appetites aroused, the bees, the bees left us amazed under plum trees. I just have two tiny poems. This one, I'm gonna read this one for my friend, Alison. I think she's the person who's heard them before. But she doesn't know the title, which we had a fun group talking about long titles once. And I decided to give this poem a long title. And it's a sentence fragment as well. It's called out a fall field overwhelmed with sunshine and out in a fall field overwhelmed with sunshine. And the wasp is immersed in the golden rod. Well, I am enthralled by the goal. The last poem is a haiku. And I realized I was looking back in time. And it's the very first poem I ever submitted to poem city, which was called poetry alive. And I'm not sure what year that was. I think it was 2000. But it was really fun when I was very excited to submit something. And then I ran to Rachel Seneshawn had been accepted. And she said, Oh, I read that. I just knew. And then it was really exciting because it was in the window of the knitting store, which I forgot what it was called, but they did their whole window based. They got inspired. The knitting studio. So they did their whole window, which is like a highlight of my life. Okay, haiku. Bare knitting needles, bright new skein, stitching fresh green leaf, node, leaf, node, leaf pleasure of introducing Andrea who's going to be next. I don't have her bio in front of me. She and her writing are heartfelt. She writes from everything from a sense of humor to intrigue to grief. Her topics can go from blossoms to bovines to belly dancing to borscht. Her metaphors and her similes are often surprising. Her poems are unique. She's one of a kind. She's humble, receptive, giving and curious. I could use a lot of literary terms to talk about her work. But what I love about her work is that it makes me go and sometimes it leaves me speechless. Andrea Gold. Somehow I missed something that I didn't realize and I really was going to prepare an introduction. So I'm going to read something from Lisa's phone after, you know, Lisa's phone after, because I can talk about my experience of working with her. But I wanted to be more specific about your books and your other things that you've done. I apologize for not having prepared a real introduction. And I made a decision today that I'm only, well, the last couple of days that I'm only going to read poems that appeared in poem city. So that narrowed things down quite a bit. Because I realized I have so many poems. And every time I look at a poem, I want to revise it. And it's an endless thing. So I decided I'm going to use my poem city. I have some flyers and I'm going to use them. But the first, before I do that, I wanted to my topic or my, what I'm going to be really talking a little bit about, are two concepts that are really important as being part of a group, because they have to do with relationship between us in the group, as well as our relationship with ourselves as members of the group, as well as our relationships with our own poetry. So the two concepts I'm going to be reflecting on are attunement and affirmation. Could you take the mic up just a little? Sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, yeah. So attunement and affirmation to me are central to the heart and soul of our process as a group. Here's one definition of attunement, the ability to emotionally connect on another level, allowing yourself to feel what the other person is feeling by entering their inner world. And here's a definition of affirmation, communicating appreciation and respect for another person, emotional support or encouragement. My first and only poetry teacher, other than my group who had my husband, who's also my teacher. My first poetry teacher, the late Sherry Olson, always said that you can write a poem about anything. For me, writing poetry is a process of shining a light on something which results in making it sacred for me. Our poetry group has become a sacred and trusted community for me, because we are attuned to one another, entering each other's inner worlds through our poems. In our process of critique, we offer affirmation and become intimate with each other's personal stories and poems. The poems become old friends. So I'm going to read six poems that I've had in Poem City. I looked it up today. I guess Poem City first, the first year was 2009 I think, but maybe I'm wrong. I looked it up and it sounded like that was probably what it was. And I guess my first poem appeared in 2013 in Poem City. After I decided to read this poem, I found out that today is actually a Jewish holiday called Yam Ha Shesh, is Holocaust Remembrance Day. And it happens that this poem is related to Holocaust. And it's actually my closest friend growing up. It's about her mother, Bianca. And it's called Bianca's Soup. This is what remains. Her recipe for brown baraka, woody Czech mushrooms, foraged each May, and the bohemian forest, marjoram, parsnips, carrots, half inch squares of celeriac. The pungent scent conjuring up the Jewish ball 1938 Prague, where Bianca met George. White Poe de Swab loves to her elbows, layered gown of organza and lace, satin shoes. He filled her dance card with walsas and tangos, securing her destiny, both of them forgetting the brown-shirted men marching in the plaza. And he did save her life. They were both in a concentration camp and he was able to save her. So I grew up eating her food, which was unbelievable. And she became an editor of Warming Magazine, so she was an amazing cook. Second poem I'm going to read is from the 2018 poem City. And it's for Sherry Olson, who I mentioned before. 1944 to 2016, she died in 2016. She was a poet, a teacher, and a great gardener. Garden scissors stand in sustained arabesque, tiny dancer in my hand. Strong legs tapered to pointed toes while I snip chick-bitty and dunky tail and fill glass jars with cuttings. Whispy stems dangle, lined up like budding ballerinas at the bar. Delegate rootlings become fleshy roots, intertwined, asked to be planted. Sherry, your succulents fill my sunroom while metaphors shall say across the page. This poem is from 2018 Poem City. I change the title slightly. It's called Parkinson's Mind Class at the Senior Center and it's dedicated to Rob Merman, who taught the class. 20 pairs of hands conjure creation, awakening the first rain, small seeds and trees emerge, swaying the first breeze, the first breath, a succession of creatures slithering, shimmying, winged, and with the universe humming the first beat of a human heart. We balance peacock feathers on noses, chins, extended fingers, make slow circles around ourselves, hold our breaths, defy gravity, then exhale as feathers cascade to earth, like autumn leaves whose work for this year is done. This poem was from 2022 Poem City. Excuse me. It's called Pinus Strobus and there's an epigram by Yoni Noguchi which is, I Hear You Call Pine Tree. I knew she was ancient by her generous girth, creaking like an old house in the winter wind, thick bark and scales as dark as the eyes of the night creatures gathered near her dusk, poised, waving. Soaring above her neighbors, just below the hayfield, needles hanging in feathery fascicles, spruce limbs woven through her myriad of branches. She waits for the processional of 17 wild turkeys who crisscross the shadowy field and fly up to roost in her strong arms. Heads folded under wings, wings draped over branches, vigilant, teetering between response and repose. They find refuge high above the coyotes and foxes. This one was from 2019 Poem City. I changed the title slightly. It's Second Marriage for David, 1950 to 2012. You offered me sushi like an exotic bouquet, taught me to sit sasa style on a tatami mat and balance smooth black chopsticks between thumb and forefinger. You were cubes of rosy tuna dipped in shiru mixed with green mustard. You were hot sake, sipped from a small porcelain cup. You were jellied fish eggs, oranges, marigolds, glistening like jewels, sweet, salty, slippery. You were a shoji screen, rice paper framed by a lattice of bamboo hiding your interior spaces. Mysterious is our brief marriage until I read your obituary years later, survived by partner Brad. And the last one is the one that's in Poem City this year. The tiny burden of her death and that title comes from a poem by A.D. Hope. I expect birds to rise in the air effortlessly, untethered by gravity or grief. Was it a miscalculation of velocity or a moment of distraction that caused a flurry of black feathers to tumble across the road then scatter in the sultry air, quiet as a prayer? I'll read that. Thank you. I'll do better next time. Lisa Masse is a poet, parent, herbalist, nutritionist, and homesteader on unceded Abenaki land. Lisa emigrated to the States from Italy as a teen and is passionate about sovereignty, lineage, and indigenous ways of knowing. Her book of poems, I Won't Be Long Here, was released by Kelsey Books in 2021. For details, visit her website. Oh I do. It does have poems in it. It's called The Culinary Pharmacy and it'll be out through inter-traditions press in December. And I will be reading from my book this evening and if anybody wants a copy you can get one at the back afterwards. Here it is. It's a picture I took of my home in the Dolomites in Northern Italy. And it's such an honor to get to be here with you all and see all of your faces. It's amazing to think we've been writing as this group for eight years and I wanted to speak a little bit about revision. And I love this topic because I never revised when I was writing poems. You know, in elementary school, middle school, high school it was like the poem came out and it was, you know, pure gold, right? And then I went to the Bennington Summer Program in 1994, which was and is a place where high school students can go to Bennington College and do work in the arts and all kinds of different arts. And I had an incredible poetry teacher there and she really raked me over the coals around revision. And now I see revision for what it is and that word comes from the Latin, right? Revisio to see again. And I even think about this book of poems, which I wrote, you know, over the course of years and came out two years ago, and I would even revise the poems that are in print. And I think revision is truly a gift because it's a way to understand how we see the world as we are changed by the world through the passage of time, right? We're always sort of seeing ourselves again and ultimately I think poetry is revision because it is this opportunity to see the world again, see our experiences and what we notice again. And one of the huge gifts of our group is that through inspiration, through prompts that everybody brings, through the critique and conversation about the poems that we share, revision is happening and often we will actually bring poems back to the group that have been revised and it's such a joy to see how we see ourselves in our poems again and how we're all part of the revision in this way. And I actually wanted to start with a poem based on a prompt that Mary brought to us and ABC Darian. So we were each given a portion of the alphabet and our charge was to write a certain amount of lines and, you know, one line had to start with the letter S, the next line, the letter G and we all composed a poem together and after all the pieces were put together we did each contribute to the revision and that being said it was quite miraculous really to see just how it flowed and each one of our sections came together. So I'll read this which is our collective group poem. A poem for all of us. Because grief upon grief returns praise in concentric circles, wrapping seasons spent diligently weaving words into metaphors that elevate our stories through the art of transformation, we form poems that transcend us an offering grateful for a day of sharing each month when we stopped to share words honored by the presence of wisdom of each of you the intelligent dialogue that stimulates our minds jewels formed from the craftsmanship of our seven-year practice together kin at the table of poetry listening to the tremolo of loons five daughters moved together through the vividness of words notice the shutter of scarlet leaves and a tumble descent cracking open our hearts allowing poetry to shape our stories quietly at times let's write and thoughtfully respond to the day's random prompt suddenly suggested by an A to Z list of possibilities tomorrow though let's grow bold revel in the world's utterly exquisite gifts earth water sky and sing sing loud viewpoint is everything the seasons shift the weight of our words like a glade of birches our xylem transports the food of our hearts our yearnings for interconnection from our roots to our crowns poetry the zenith of what makes us human makes us friends so the first two poems i wanted to read um are actually from prompts that were brought one by mary guzzle which is an ancient persian form of writing poetry that involves a theme and repetition i think you'll pick up on it um and the second one was brought by andrea and it is about all of us bringing a photograph bread guzzle my father taught me that fenugreek caraway and fennel are the secrets to our rye bread hard enough to crack under a fist we call it by its german name chütlbrot every fall we stocked namna cellar with newspaper wrapped stacks of this hard tack bread after moving to the states i spent a year researching the roma who carried spices in their caravans for bread they brought fenugreek caraway and fennel from north asia wouldn't let those seeds drop until they reached a safe place to bake their motto the alps became this haven and rye sourdough has been handed down ever since bubbling into the staple with which we were bred when i go home to italy grains are not the villains they have become for america's health obsessed disdainers of bread instead they are revered as keepers at the chapel door of seasons there is strength to persevere if one at least has bread fenugreek cleanses the fluid body caraway disinfects and fennel helps digest what may be too dense about liza's pannet Easter picture on our way to church mom in her coral jacket that i would inherit in high school holds our hands in front of first cithia first spring gold my father the photographer calls for a smile counts off and guido proud in his navy suit decides to grin through his freckles instead of making his usual fish face i am the one who has something to say in my pink dream glasses and yellow dress with white lace the snapshot captures me arms flung skyward head tilted back leaving the others behind and again in the theme of revision so many of these poems are ones that i've brought to this group and it's really in many ways because of this group that my book exists in print so revision and critique and togetherness or a gift um these next two poems are sort of snapshots character portrayals of different individuals so just let your imagination take you away chihuly over venice loridana balboni had heard the trumping of paint splattered shoes across her balcony even glimpsed the eye-patched man more than once but never thought to mention him to her sister the tizia or suggest they invite them to sit prosecco from crystal flutes that while dazzling under a glass chandelier at one of their seasonal festae paled against the green grandeur of the glass this gapped tooth man blue blue in his pilchup workshop workshop overlooking the quiet water puget sound so unlike the rising canals of venice it's a wonder he ever found his way to or maybe she sent him away so she could marvel at the sculpture entirely alone lie beneath it on her balcony by candlelight wake up and take her gondola into the kind of grandeur pointed to it with a grimace pretending she had no idea how it had landed suspended above her palazzo as though opera singers had wailed out each tail tipped sphere during a midnight performance of la fagliata voices rising from ashes as glass does singing itself to life from a million grains of sand hiding inside each line that the sculpture breathed out of fire pitraca of the ogani and pitraca is a famous italian poet among other things as you'll hear as poet he kept ten inkwells wrote to please persimmons so they might ripen before the bear of winter took them to her den as priest he gleaned pomegranates before heities could count on too many gray months hardened his sermons when fire would not warn the hearts of shivering villagers as public official he collected leather baglita from farmers who herded goats and cows along the Apennine mountain spine he would have preferred to trade cheese for their servitude returned to his home of river stone walls and wine bottle windows light the taper and eat picorino with grapes and bread i wanted to read this poem that is a great example of revision so this is a poem i wrote and this group actually suggested that mixing up the stanzas would give more of an element of understanding what my mom is all about and my mom's lineage is one of mental differences and bipolar diagnosis both my grandmother and my mom and i i took the group's advice because the poem as it reads now does give a little bit more picture of what it felt like to grow up with this person and so that revision was extremely helpful letter to my mom my eyes welled when you wouldn't leave your bed for three days at a time with no explanation except a migraine your suffering bounced off the cold marble floors of our apartment i wanted to avenge you but there were too many culprits your father sitting on the porch with a shotgun when you missed curfew your mother running away with the car salesman to buy another pair of red pumps your church demanding a dollar every sunday when your allowance was only 50 cents after four miscarriages you were born blue and silent until the nurse gave you oxygen behind privacy drapes at kansas city children's hospital in 1941 raising your babies in italy kept you from getting burned until you had to return to kansas walk over the coals of your memories care for the failing parents who could not care for you you don't believe you're crazy but crazy has been rising slowly inside you since before you were born a candle left to singe your mother's dining room curtains after all the voices in your head had stumbled to bed you weren't able to dampen the flames the generations of women have fanned into a blades i see behind those narrowing eyes you rub throbbing temples and let the fire of your welsh turn to mist midwest heritage burn you down i am making a reduction of my life so i might understand yours i'll read one more short one out of the sapiona cloister which is one of the cloisters we would drive past on our drive from the adriatic sea where i mostly grew up to the dolomites where most of my family lives sapiona cloister we leave fed right after dark headed for our ancestral dolomites blind to changing landscape until the moon emerges and reveals that we traded the pole river plains for steep peaks protected by holy ones i roll down the window here cloister songs echo from a rocky fortress high above the autostrada built with the same stone that harbors sisters praying everyone knows they devote their lives to spirit yet no one is allowed inside to touch the secret that which was never born but lives in the mountain blessed by the bright moon and the moonless night and i'd like to introduce jessie libosco jessie is a poet a visual artist residing on unceded land of ashiname in michigan and abenaki in vermont her book native was published in 2020 copies available in the back and she was a participating fellow of nature cultures writing the land project as well as a yearly contributor and facilitator for poem city and the organizer of us all thank you jessie what a group of poets to work with right it's pretty amazing these women are so committed that word wasn't talked about but i think it's really important to say how committed they are um even you know through zoom having zoom as a tool i get to be part of the groups even when i'm in michigan and and they're here which is great we haven't skipped a beat it's been great so my topic is the element of exploring the craft so we could come to poetry group and just catch up and read our poems and do our critiques but the best part of our coming together would be lost because monthly we encourage each other to grow as poets not to do the same old same old each person is responsible for facilitating and bringing a new tool for us to use so those things bring ways to change our thinking we use forms and techniques that shift our minds we take them out of every person gets taken out of their comfort zones because we can get really comfortable writing in a certain way with a certain rhythm and we have all kinds of things that force us out of that everything from haiku to pantoum to villanelle or using art to inspire an ecrastic poem or the lining up of letters in an acrostic poem and lisa mentioned a couple too that that we used but for eight years i don't think we've repeated many it's pretty amazing and if you noticed i don't know if and maybe i should wait till i read to ask you this question but if you listen to each one of the poets they all have their own voice even though we all work together a lot of times artists in our groups will start painting similar like their subject may will become similar and many poet groups start writing similarly but i think because we have these tools and we're constantly refreshing our minds that our poets have remained pretty unique and and clear to their own style so i guess i just want to say that exploring the craft really takes us out of like if you if you were a great cook and you just keep trying new recipes you get to be even better because one informs the other and that's kind of what happens with us and we challenge ourselves by the experiences and there's definitely a concentration and dedication to each one of these writers to develop their voice so i would like to begin with my poems i'm going to read the first one from native and it's a prose poem it's called the first immigrant never born i dwell in foreign landscape i'm going to start over this was inspired by Clarissa Pinkoli Estes and she said this this sentence the soul is the first immigrant and that is the catalyst of this poem never born i dwell in foreign landscape flow with water the color of blood sail shorelines of skin and bone tread lightly on language of the ordinary in complete harmony with fire and stars when recognized all life gestures through my fingers into fruition i am a stranger in a lonely land a small stone a golden sun usually it takes death to be noticed the final fall the last chance the injury that changes all matter of things how can i speak to you i can't i have no voice you must look for me so that i can cross the border of mind into mythology perceived in the present see me in another the stallion the bear the ones who dance and sing ones who orchestrate symphonies of astounding music ones who walk the streets with grocery carts and sacks on their backs looking for homes hunger opens how deeply do you want to discover anything other than your own reflection be curious have courage you don't have to feed me the gardens of the gods will be waiting when the sky grows dark the fires were in the distance the earthquakes of your life shape shifts into something unrecognizable you'll see me i'm standing where i always am amidst the rubble upon a mountaintop under an apple tree with you being the privilege of living with my mother as she grows old and loses her memory and she's 90 now and it's quite an event to kind of lose the mother you know and observe and witness what she sees and and just be part of the conversation this poem is called the turtle bird a female pheasant appears one day in a place she was never seen before her row ton body wobbling scavenging for food in the court yard gardens nibbling on fallen berries from an old tree she scatter seeds found from the fear next door my elderly mother thinks it's a turtle until i assure her it has feathers yet i do not tell her she is wrong the unraveling of the mind takes her to a different kind of seeing and perhaps what she perceives is really there the bird returns each day like a peasant woman about her business stops to see us through the glass my mother is entertained and i wonder if the bird is a spirit sent to notify us not to fret but to remain poised and trusting that all will be as it should and that even the pheasant has found pleasure in her new home so this poem is a combination of acrostic hybun and haiku and it's short it's not long but it is poetry is the title and each letter for acrostic is p o e t r y and then each one of the other poems will refer back to that poetry penning words that express how i see the world opening to new perspectives evolving into creating an original voice trusting the process of dedicated writing reading a variety of authors to gain skill and inspiration yesterday's tragedies and stories crafted into poems each time i witness the news violence in a vicinity far from home words become islands small marks on paper in which to ponder my thoughts capture them like fish in the sea hold for observation words a way to hold world complications in quiet try to understand so lisa had mentioned that i was um in the nature cultures writing the land poets i was assigned the vermont land trust trail on sparrow farm between sparrow farm and north range nature center for one year to walk through in and write poetry about and then it got put into a vermont or a land trust book for many land trusts throughout the country but vermont land trust had three poets and i was one of them and this is only one poem from that it's called what steps to take my steps are not the bears lumbering through forest ferns pressing their weight clawing bark reaching berries nor are they thin prints of fox arrow to the wind swiftly scouting land for mice and moving food i am not like wolf masking my hunt around stands of trees and brush waiting for prey who am i daring to travel in this moss covered land that my kind have separated from without asking questions i know nothing how do i walk so as not to disturb listen so that i do not disrupt sit quietly so that all creatures and plants around me are free to fly and run sense that my presence is not a threat that i will not squash partridge berry under my feet take a birch to the ground lead burning coals from a warning fire and like any home that i enter not dismantle the woodland altars that have spirited the caves and spaces with their grace i'm going to read one more and then we'll have time for questions if you have any because i reside in two places like failure vermont and right near detroit gross point michigan or sinker shores in that area i get to see a whole other part of i know we have homeless people in everywhere but this particular homeless woman really struck me she had created a world under a bridge the other side of the veil on a highway overpass under a cement bridge she made her home with comforters made of plastic bags a shopping cart filled with old shoes dirty socks magazines and empty water bottles when she paced her ragged hair dreaded in her knee to her knees like a mane intertwined with dust and debris the roar of traffic was her symphony echoing in super sludge a guardian of her realm she talks to the drivers going by or ignores them in mumbles head toward the sky to the spirits that provoke her does she see something that i cannot is she on the other side of the veil where voices live with stars she could possess something ancient like a shaman in this corner of the street where she thrives and her story was nothing to eat thank you and i must say it's thrilling for us to be able to hear each other because we are so hard at work when we get together every month um it's it's really great for us to hear each other as well so as far as questions go you can ask any of us um i don't know if we should all just come up and be up here um does anyone have any questions for anyone of course because this one has um innervising it over a number of years and i feel like i maybe i've got it now but anyway draws furrows and contour lines across the hillside from north to south as yellow ochre umber leaves fall from trees curling downward like fine pencil shavings and sun lost in her own gradation studies lays down her graphite marks by depth degrees dark then darker darker still until her long thin shadows from ridgeline trees have sown the fields with cross hatched strokes she smudged from west to east at end of day highlighting her landscape in such enviable ways the artist can only dream of mimicking one day what what was it for each of you that drew you to the group jesse jesse but once you hooked you what made you stay i'll tell you when i first went i did not know that i would keep doing it i thought i'll try this and um i will say that if um you know i could be in this group to try to um to have it help me improve my poetry but being with this group of women wants me to improve myself as a person they're an amazing group of women they're strong and uh that's just really supportive so that's my three that sounds good well my reason for even bringing people together was uh lisa and i have been writing for 18 years we we i think i invited a group of people way back 18 years ago there was a snowstorm night and lisa was the only one that showed up at the door and from that point on we stayed very dedicated we still still write we still do once a month with each other and with the group as well but i thought it was really important because it was just the two of us to broaden and learn more from others have other voices come in um and and it's definitely has happened like we all feed each other so much and grow from each other tremendously so um i just wanted to branch out i thought lisa and i were doing great but we just and right we spiced it up we spiced it up and i agree with what jesse had said previously which is that we all maintain a really unique style and voice um and i learn so much from that every time so yeah a beautiful group of humans and and that hook that kind of keeps us going of you know what we bring to the group with you know the different prompts and exercises we bring in what we learn from each other yeah and i would also say that um with anyone who's been in a in a writing group or that kind of group that we get really do get to know each other's voice style whatever it is we're working toward and can um help mirror that back you know to the to the writer and say you know yes or or know that that that it could you know is there a different you know is that really what you want to say or something not i mean and that's not criticism but it's more it's always that refining and and clarifying and holding it for each person and the more we know about each other's writing the sort of more dedicated we get to that to doing that yeah to supporting each other one thing i can say is that i i of all the group on the least i have no formal training at all with poetry um everyone else here that's really studied poetry deeply and i really haven't so i always was i sometimes i feel uh you know like a little bit of the imposter syndrome but the fact is you know i've stayed with it i at first i was pretty intimidated i would say and you know i but you know now i feel like this is really my my group my my tribe don't let her fool you yeah she's amazing yeah we're intimidated by her no seriously yes everyone has evolved tremendously yeah for sure so i know one other thing i wanted to say is that each one of us has something we go after in our critique form it's really interesting i watched that all right listen for it when poems are read each in five ten okay thank you it's really interesting the focus each one of us has when it comes to critiquing and you'll hear it come in the way uh what we look for which you have five different people looking at the elephant from different angles it's awesome so we really get our poems tweaked nicely um thank you everyone for being here and there are books in the back um if anyone's interested thank you