Mobile Photography & Art – Saturday Poetry – July by Henrietta Cordelia Ray with Knut Roeling
This weeks Saturday Poetry, matched with mobile photography/art is entitled ‘July’ by Henrietta Cordelia Ray. She was born in New York City in 1849. She authored two collections of poetry, Sonnets (Press of J. J. Little & Co., 1893), and Poems (The Grafton Press, 1910). In 1876, Ray’s poem “Lincoln” was read at the unveiling of the Emancipation Memorial in Washington, D.C. Ray died in 1917. I have matched artwork by Knut Röling entitled ‘Misty Morning Mood’ to this poem. You can view his Instagram feed here. If you would like to be featured in our Saturday Poetry section, please ensure you include the hashtag #theappwhisperer to any images posted to Instagram. This will…
Mobile Photography & Art – Saturday Poetry – ‘The Moon Rose over the Bay. I had a Lot of Feelings’ by Donika Kelly
This weeks Saturday Poetry, matched with mobile photography/art is entitled ‘The Moon Rose over the Bay. I had a Lot of Feelings’ by Donika Kelly. She goes on to explain more about this poem “Often, I am thinking of how I can ground love—feeling it, being in it—and being present in my body and in joy, in my work. These moves feel so urgent to me as a black lesbian in this political and cultural moment, where the news each day seems to argue against my and my loved ones’ humanity.” Kelly is the author of the chapbook Aviarium (fivehundred places, 2017), and the full-length collection Bestiary (Graywolf Press, 2016), winner of the 2018…
Mobile Photography & Art – Saturday Poetry – ‘Roses’ by Ellen Bass with @dreamsandfields
This weeks Saturday Poetry, matched with mobile photography/art is entitled ‘Roses’ by Ellen Bass. Ellen Bass was born in Philadelphia in 1947 and grew up in New Jersey. She received a BA from Goucher College and an MA in creative writing from Boston University, where she studied with Anne Sexton. She later said that Anne Sexton “encouraged me to write more, to expand, to go deeper and wider. She breathed life back into the process. Without her, I might have given up.” She is the author of nine poetry collections, the most recent of which is Indigo (Copper Canyon Press, 2020). Her other books include Like a Beggar (Copper Canyon Press, 2014), which…
Mobile Photography & Art – Saturday Poetry – ‘Kindness’ by Naomi Shihab Nye
This weeks Saturday Poetry, matched with mobile photography/art is entitled ‘Kindness’ by Naomi Shihab Nye. It is a poem that I often return too, especially when I have inadvertently brushed up against the harshness of this world. It is beautiful poetry and one of my favourites, it reminds us of what we already know. It starts ‘before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth‘. I know what that feels like and makes my stake in kindness of the highest value. The third paragraph begins ‘Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must…
Mobile Photography & Art – Saturday Poetry – ‘What is Water?’ by Danielle Legros Georges
This weeks Saturday Poetry, matched with mobile photography/art is entitled ‘What is Water?’ by Danielle Legros Georges. Georges is the author of The Dear Remote Nearness of You (Barrow Street Press, 2016) and was chosen as Boston’s second poet laureate in 2014. Georges was born in Haiti and raised in the United States. She received a BA from Emerson College in Boston and an MFA in poetry from New York University. She is the author of two poetry collections: The Dear Remote Nearness of You (Barrow Street Press, 2016), winner of the New England Poetry Club’s 2016 Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize, and Maroon (Curbstone Books, 2001). She has received fellowships from the Barbara Deming Memorial…
Mobile Photography & Art – Saturday Poetry ‘Kindness’ by Naomi Shihab Nye with Susan Latty
This weeks Saturday Poetry, matched with mobile photography/art is entitled ‘Kindness’ by Naomi Shihab Nye. Naomi Shihab Nye was born on March 12, 1952, in St. Louis, Missouri, to a Palestinian father and an American mother. During her high school years, she lived in Ramallah in Palestine, the Old City in Jerusalem, and San Antonio, Texas, where she later received her BA in English and world religions from Trinity University. I have selected this image by @pause.and.breathe – Susan Latty entitled ‘This is the exquisite hour’. You can follow her on Instagram, here. Nye is the author of numerous books of poems, most recently Cast Away: Poems for Our Time (Greenwillow Books,…
Mobile Photogrpraphy & Art – Saturday Poetry ‘A Walk Round the Park’ by Sandra Lim with Milena Mastandrea @mirea17
This weeks Saturday Poetry, matched with mobile photography/art is entitled ‘A Walk Round the Park’ by Sandra Lim. She is the author of The Wilderness (W. W. Norton, 2014), selected by Louise Glück for the 2013 Barnard Women Poets Prize, and a previous collection of poetry, Loveliest Grotesque (Kore Press, 2006). She is an associate professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “This is one of a series of love poems that are a part of a larger manuscript about desire and reckoning. There’s something about a love affair that makes you decide you’re going to see things through for the sake of…
Mobile Photography & Art Saturday Poetry – ‘Life’ by Emma Lowrey Williams with Clint Cline
This weeks Saturday Poetry, matched with mobile photography/art is entitled ‘Life’ by Emma Lowrey Williams. She was born around 1934 and graduated from the Cherokee Female Seminary in 1856 and taught at Green Leaf School, a Cherokee Public School. I have matched this image by @clixit2020 – Clint Cline ‘And whom do you really know’. If you would like to be featured in our Saturday Poetry section, please ensure you include the hashtag #theappwhisperer to any images posted to Instagram. This will mean we will be able to consider it. To view the others we have published in this section, go here. Source poets.org
Mobile Photography & Art Saturday Poetry – ‘Countdown as Slow Kisses’ by Michael Wasson
This weeks Saturday Poetry, matched with mobile photography/art is entitled ‘Countdown as Slow Kisses’ by Michael Wasson. “We are given these bodies—full of beauty, ache, and history—and are told to survive. We lean into joy and marvel, into our living, and yet we know that what we desire ultimately devours us. Might we surrender as we climax toward our gorgeous, unbearable ruin? This poem says yes”, explains Wasson. Michael Wasson is Nimíipuu from the Nez Perce Reservation in Lenore, Idaho. He earned a BA from Lewis-Clark State College and an MFA from Oregon State University. The author of Swallowed Light (Copper Canyon Press, 2021), Self-Portrait with Smeared Centuries (Éditions des Lisières, 2018), translated by Beatrice…
Mobile Photography & Art Saturday Poetry – ‘On Floriography’ by Karen An-Hwei Lee
This weeks Saturday Poetry, matched with mobile photography/art is entitled ‘On Floriography’ by Karen An-Hwei Lee. “This poem explores the ancient practice of floriography, the coded language of flowers, as a way to express human love through the use of fragrance, colors, and vivid symbolism. By elucidating the phenomenon of florescence alongside the art of floral arrangement, the poem encourages readers to extract poetry and beauty out of a dystopic world”, explained Lee. She holds an MFA from Brown University and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. A poet, novelist, and translator, Lee is the author of three books of poetry: Phyla of Joy (Tupelo Press, 2012), Ardor (Tupelo Press, 2008),…
