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Happy Announcement: Another published poem!

mwinikates

I was incredibly thrilled to hear that the Mass Poetry Festival was returning for 2021, as it has been an incredible source of inspiration and community for me for years. I was even more happy to see that as part of this year’s festival, they were running a contest for the creation of ekphrastic poetry (a personal favorite). They invited any and all to respond poetically to any of 12 works of art from those in the Montserrat College of Art community, and the top poem for each piece would be exhibited online and also be sold as broadsheet posters to support MassPoetry.

I am honored and excited to say that my poem, “Manifest,” inspired by the painting “Being Perfect is a Very Unrealistic Expectation” was chosen to be part of the exhibition and the broadsheet publication.

The girl is a ghost
made of moonlight and movement
blue smoke in the mirror
of a reflecting pool world.

You can use the link above to jump straight to my poem, or you can visit the whole exhibit here:

Mass Poetry Online Ekphrastic Gallery

If you are so inspired, you can purchase any of the broadsides from the gallery here. (Bit of vanity, direct link to mine is here.)

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National Poetry Month – Link Roundup

mwinikates

It’s National Poetry Month again, and I am bringing you a few cool links to events and ideas that are inspiring me this April.

  • What happens when you gather together a bunch of politically active artists? The Poetic Address to the Nation. Happening on April 22, at 7pm, this event is an artists’ compilation of and reaction to “the interlocking crises of systemic racism, eviction, poverty, access to healthcare, and more laid bare by COVID-19” You can register for it here. (Full disclosure, this event is being co-sponsored this year by MassCreative, an advocacy organization with which I am affiliated.)
  • NPR wants your Twitter poems! (Or TikTok, apparently, which has turned into a hotbed of spoken word poetry, which is cool.) Use the hashtag #NPRpoetry for a chance to catch their eye and get featured on All Things Considered.
  • Get a look at rarely seen items from the Emily Dickinson Collection at Harvard’s Houghton Library (where they keep the cool, old, rare stuff).
  • The Mass Poetry Festival is back!
  • Longfellow National Historic Site has released their schedule and registration for their virtual summer poetry readings.

And okay, this isn’t technically poetry, but I just can’t stop listening to Perseverance rolling across Mars. There’s definitely a poem in there somewhere.

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Finding inspiration despite and still

mwinikates

It’s been a while. Like a lot of people, I found writing incredibly difficult in the last year, and what I did write was more private processing than blog-worthy and interesting. Also like many of us, I have had an intermittently hard time giving myself grace when it felt like I was ignoring my writer-identity, but I am trying hard to recognize that what I made in the last year was no less valuable than a poem or a story. When I did have a creative impulse, I picked up my flute, stitched a Christmas stocking, or made a box fort with my toddler.

And it turns out that there’s a poem in all that, too. I’m still working on it.

Poet and potter M.C. Richards says it better:

The creative spirit creates with whatever materials are present. With food, with children, with building blocks, with speech, with thoughts, with pigment, with an umbrella, or a wineglass, or a torch. We are not craftsmen only during studio hours. Any more than a man is wise only in his library. Or devout only in church. The material is not the sign of the creative feeling for life: of the warmth and sympathy and reverence which foster being; techniques are not the sign; “art” is not the sign. The sign is the light that dwells within the act, whatever its nature or its medium.

Read more about her at the ever-brilliant Brain Pickings here.

For other really interesting reads, check out this really cool essay about the way the King Arthur legend is a collection of reinventions that invites further reinvention, by Tracy Deonn. I’ve always been drawn to the many variations of Arthuriana, and clearly I’m going to have to read her book too.

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An Open Letter of Thanks to Senator Elizabeth Warren

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The author, third from right, at Museums Advocacy Day 2020, February 25

Dear Senator Warren,

Thank you.

Thank you for the small things, like hiring staff for your senatorial office who demonstrate the same level of graciousness, dedication, and desire to help that you show daily. I’ve interacted with many of them on advocacy days down on Capitol Hill in the last several years, and it’s always a pleasure.

Thank you for the big things, championing the rights of everyday people, and bending your remarkable intellect to using government to protect people from the power money buys banks, big business, and special interests. I believe in your big structural change, and I believe you’ll help us get there in whatever role you inhabit.

Thank you for serving the citizens of Massachusetts with such energy, enthusiasm, and earnestness.  I am proud to have voted for you, and proud to call you my senator. I would have been thrilled beyond words to call you my president.  I have no doubt you are the president this country needs and far better than we currently deserve.

Thank you for showing the world the power of a passionate woman. In a society that wants us to be small-voiced and conciliatory, you stand up there and use your platform to show us that women can be passionate in public; that sometimes that passion looks like anger, and sometimes it is anger, and sometimes that anger is more than justified.  I will not apologize for voicing my passion anymore.

Thank you for throwing yourself out into the public arena daily.  Thank you for your tireless grace, your optimism, your perseverance.  In the last year, when I collapsed on the couch, exhausted from trying to run a household, keep a full time job, raise a toddler whose cardiologist father couldn’t be around, I would see pictures of you in the selfie line and think, “Senator Warren’s out there, wearing out another pair of running shoes.”  And I would get up.

I’m going to keep getting up.  I owe you that much. I donated, I convinced friends to vote for you, I shared your plans and your ideas in person and on social media, and it wasn’t enough.  I’m sorry.  But I am going to keep getting up, because that’s what you do, and if you can do it then so can I.

I know you’re going to keep fighting for me, for the future of my family, for the planet, and even for all the people who didn’t vote for you. So this is my pinkie promise: I’m going to keep fighting for you, and voting for you. I’m going to keep talking about the importance of intelligence, compassion, a willingness to listen and learn, and an articulate passion, about how those are the qualities we need in leaders.

Thank you for being an inspiration.

Please stick around, Senator.  We need you more than you know.

With deepest admiration and respect,

Meg Winikates

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Literary Podcasts: My Current Favorites

mwinikates

Now it's Route 91 and it's still pretty but so much busier...
Postcard view of the Connecticut River Valley circa 1930-1945, Boston Public Library Tichnor Brothers collection #71674. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:View_along_Conn._River,_showing_Mt._Holyoke_Range,_Holyoke,_Mass_(71674).jpg

I spend a lot of time on the road these days, and though I never used to be much of a podcast listener, I’ve become a convert, largely thanks to these several podcasts that keep me company on my peregrinations:

For a short thoughtful dose of poetry

  • The Slowdown, with Tracie K. Smith – a 5-minute daily dose of personal reflection and a single poem, read by a US Poet Laureate. She usually talks more about what the poem makes her think of, rather than the technicalities of the poemcraft, but sometimes there’s a bit of that too.

For the joy of listening to stories, with great voice acting and diverse authors/cultures

  • Levar Burton Reads – Reading Rainbow for grown-ups.  Mostly speculative fiction, but with a dash of anything and everything else, with introductions and conclusions where Burton talks about what draws him to these short stories. (Dangerous to listen to on late night drives because his voice is so warm and comfortable it’s like a bedtime story, but great for keeping calm in rush hour traffic!)
  • Circle Round – Hosted by WBUR with the tagline “Where storytime happens all the time,” this is kid-safe folktales and fairytales, from many cultures, with fabulous guest actors/readers and great sound and music effects. It’s more like a radio play than a single-reader storytime, and while it’s pitched to kid listeners, with suggestions for conversations and activities to do with one’s family/friends after each story, the stories themselves are ageless.

For story-craft, author interviews, etc

  • Cooking the Books – Hosted by two authors, Fran Wilde and Aliette de Bodard, ‘where genre fiction meets food,’ each episode features an interview with an author talking about a recently published or about to be published book, with questions mostly focused on food and worldbuilding, but with fun departures into other parts of storycraft, personal interests, etc. I add a lot of books to my TBR list from this podcast. They also have a recipe from each author on the website, which is fun.
  • Imaginary Worlds – Hosted by Eric Molinsky, a show about the worlds we create, how, and why.  It’s both about creators and fans, the experience of fandom in many forms, and across many platforms, including books, movies, games, and more. Not every episode speaks ‘to me,’ but there’s humor and interesting things to think about in every episode, even the ones that are initially more of a stretch for me to appreciate.

For word-geekery

  • Lingthusiasm – “A podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne.” I’ve always been fascinated with words and languages, and in another reality there’s likely a version of me that decided linguistics was the way to go. This universe’s version of me enjoys listening to people who know what they’re talking about be excited about things like the sounds you stop hearing once you’re no longer a baby, or the way concepts of color are constructed in languages around the world, or that ‘every word is a real word.’ It gives me thoughts about world-building, of course, but it’s also just fun and gives you random cool facts to bring up at the dinner table.
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Poets and Political Power

mwinikates

I’m really interested to see the results of the Poetry Coalition’s project “What is it, then, between us?: Poetry & Democracy.” I heard about it through MassPoetry’s call for participants, and while I didn’t get my submission in on time, I’m looking forward to reading and admiring the artistic erasure poems created from some iconic speeches and texts. These included selections from the US Constitution, Bill of Rights, Dr. King’s “Letter From a Birmingham Jail,” and the speech “Our books and our pens are the most powerful weapons,” which Malala Yousafzai delivered to the UN. Selected entries will be installed on the MBTA and other public locations, which should be a more thought-provoking set of signage than the usual T ads. I’d love to be able to overhear the discussions such things might generate on the Orange Line or elsewhere!

I enjoyed reading all the selections and while I was afraid it would be hard to pick, ultimately one stood out for me above all the others. I chose a piece from the Constitution which originally details how various kinds of powers are distributed between the executive and legislative branches of government, but thought that what was most evocative (and necessary, currently), was a reminder about those powers which are given to the President–but only temporarily. Since I didn’t submit mine, I’m sharing it here:

Constitutional Reminder

A Reminder

The President shall be
in the actual Service of the United States;
and he shall have Power.

He shall have Power, by and with
Advice and Consent.

The President shall have Power
which shall expire.

ArtWeek 2019 in Amherst, MA
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ArtWeek 2019 Highlights

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#ArtOfRainPoetry

It was a gloriously damp weekend for much of the start of ArtWeek, which meant good visibility for the Emily Dickinson Museum’s installation of rain poetry in downtown Amherst.  Below are some of the poems that I spotted walking around town (including mine!)

ArtWeek in Amherst MA
“To see the Summer Sky Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie True Poems flee” by Emily Dickinson

Artweek in Amherst MA
“A man leaves his path written across the snow But more elegant and modest: silver tracings left by snails.” by Manuel Becera

ArtWeek 2019 in Amherst, MA
“Not that I have forgotten robins, playgrounds, the crocus’ imperial glow, nor breeze-tousled pondweed– still my camera catalogs the evidence: item: one budding branch; item: one lawn, indifferent green– to prove unto the jury of myself the truth of spring.” by Meg Winikates

Florence Poetry Carnival

Up the road from where I live, the neighborhood of Florence hosted their first ever “Poetry Carnival” on Saturday afternoon, which was fairly well attended despite the chill and damp. A number of local institutions sent representatives, including the Emily Dickinson Museum, the Forbes Library, the Freckled Fox Cafe, Poems2Go, and Perugia  Press. There were writing activities and poetry-inspired crafts, an open mic session, and a discussion/reading between the outgoing and incoming Florence Poets Laureate.  Though it was small, in the absence this year of the statewide MassPoetry Festival, it was lovely to spend an afternoon among other poetry readers, writers, and enthusiasts.

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This was my favorite activity brought by the Emily Dickinson Museum, which plays with Dickinson’s habit of using variants in her poetry (lines where there are options for more than one word to fill out the thought), and invites attendees to add their own variants to her poem “Water is taught by thirst.” I added “the return of dawn” as a variant to “Birds, by the….”

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Blackout poem by Meg Winikates, from a recycled book page provided by Northampton’s Forbes Library. The librarians were collecting the poems created that day for the library’s zine club to turn into a zine commemorating the day, so I left mine behind to participate. I also found out the library has a massive poetry collection, which I’m looking forward to exploring. 

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Looking forward to rain!

mwinikates

A few weeks ago, when the Emily Dickinson Museum posted a call for short poems for potential inclusion in their #ArtofRainPoetry event for ArtWeek, I got very excited.  I’ve enjoyed the many photos I’ve seen from MassPoetry’s previous rain poetry installations, and I’m always in favor of projects that get poetry out into public view.  Last fall I had a haiku, “Robin and Rabbit,” selected to be part of the Minuteman Bikeway Public Art project, though sadly I never managed to get a good picture of it in situ, as the chalk paint was laid down one day and the next four days were heavy wind and rain, so many of the poems were obscured by wet leaves.

This spring, however, I can look forward to a rainy day, as my poem “If Spring (Recalcitrance)” was one of five selected from over 80 submissions to be part of the Dickinson Museum’s installation on the sidewalks of Amherst.

Starting this weekend, you can find my poem and 5 others, on the sidewalks of Amherst.  We’re due for rain both Saturday and Sunday, so keep your eyes peeled! (Bonus: my poem is going to be located only a block from Bart’s, so you can grab some ice cream at the same time!)

Rain poem map

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely seas and the sky, and all I ask is a tall ship and a start to steer her by....
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Bringing poetry to museum practice

mwinikates

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely seas and the sky, and all I ask is a tall ship and a start to steer her by....

I love the opportunities which present themselves for my creative life and my work life to collide.  Today I had the chance to present a webinar for my day job at the New England Museum Association, on bringing a poetry mindset to the world of writing exhibit labels (or using poetry to interact with your visitors through your exhibit labels).

“Hack This Label: National Poetry Month Edition” was a free webinar, the video and slides of which you can now access through NEMA here.

Or, you can watch or download them straight from this blog here:

Hack this Label slides

And if you’re looking for other ways to think about creative writing in museum spaces, you can check out last year’s webinar, “Recharge, Reimagine, and Write.”

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Seeking New Landscapes? Read these!

mwinikates

Writing that is strongly situated in its setting has always appealed to me, as a place-based writer.  So when I saw the call for submissions for “landscapes” from all the sins, I had a lot of fun looking through my ‘ready for sending’ folder and hit ‘submit’ faster than the Flash on a sugar rush. To my great glee, one of my personal favorite poems also caught the editors’ eyes, and is now published in Issue 5 of all the sins: contemporary landscapes.

800px-Guillaume_Vogels_-_De_vijver_in_de_winter
Guillaume Vogels, De vijver in de winter, 1885, oil on canvas. Currently owned by Stedelijke Musea Sint-Niklaas, used with creative commons permission.

You can jump directly to my poem here: “Belgian Skylight.”

I wrote “Belgian Skylight” when I was living abroad, teaching kindergarten in Brussels. It was a phenomenal year in which I learned a lot and traveled a lot and spent a lot of time watching the light change out my window in my garret bedroom at the top of the house I shared with two other teachers. There’s a kind of light in a Brussels winter that was especially conducive to writing, probably because it was the kind of blank white that was reminiscent of a page waiting for words, both promising and melancholy. As we head into the cold season (finally!) here in New England, it’s lovely timing for this piece to come to life.

I highly recommend the whole of issue 5; there are some gorgeous pieces of art within, both visual and literary, so do go check it out!