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),…
Mobile Photography & Art Saturday Poetry – ‘Self-Portrait with Weeping Woman’ by Deborah Paredez
This weeks Saturday Poetry, matched with mobile photography/art is entitled ‘Self-Portrait with Weeping Woman’ by Deborah Paredez. “There is so much horror these days, but there’s a long history of terror thrust into the lives of brown folks and a long history of women standing on the shore raging against it. The sonnet is the envelope into which I’ve been folding my scrawled letters lately, and in this one I wanted to honor those women—mythic and real—whose refusal to relinquish their grief and rage catalysed epic transformations for them and offered me a way of knowing and moving through the world”, explains Paradez. Paredez received a PhD from Northwestern University.…
Mobile Photography & Art Saturday Poetry – ’10 AM is When You Come to Me’ by Meg Day
This weeks Saturday Poetry, matched with mobile photography/art is entitled ’10 am is When You Come To Me’ by Meg Day. Day explains the meaning of this poem, “Hearing folks frequently ask Deaf folks to imagine our lives differently: they ask how we haven’t killed ourselves without music (because they would); they want to know how much we miss the sound of birds, our lover’s voice; and they don’t want to learn ASL but they want to have sex with the lights out. As I try to de-center nondisabled and hearing priorities in my work, I’ve had to think differently about the relationships I have with people who occupy those…
Mobile Photography & Art Saturday Poetry – ‘Disclosure’ by Rebecca Givens Rolland with Rene Valencia
This weeks Saturday Poetry, matched with mobile photography/art is entitled ‘Disclosure’ by Rebecca Givens Rolland. She is the author of three poetry collections, including The Wreck of Birds (Bauhan Publishing, 2012), winner of the May Sarton New Hampshire Prize. I have matched this image untitled by @reneviolence – Rene Valencia. You can view and follow his work on Instagram 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 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 – ‘The Body Remembers’ by Yusef Komunyakaa with @poetry_fish
This weeks Saturday Poetry, matched with mobile photography/art is entitled ‘The Body Remembers’ by Yusef Komunyakaa. ‘The Body Remembers’, explains Komunyakaa, ‘sprung out of my memory of swimming in a creek in Bogalusa, Louisiana, in the 1950s when the entire culture was still segregated—especially in any joyful display of the body. However, we boys often took risks and, coming back to that past stitched with youthful energy, perhaps our bravado was fuelled by a public dare. Such a moment of play is full of celebration, especially during the months of July and August. But also, there is a reality to our naïve recklessness—and there, in the danger of such moments,…
Mobile Photography & Art Saturday Poetry – ‘Breathe. As in. (shadow)’ by Rosamond S King
This weeks Saturday Poetry, matched with mobile photography/art is entitled ‘Breathe. As.in’ by Rosamond S King. King is the author of Rock | Salt | Stone (Nightboat Books, 2017), winner of the 2018 Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Poetry. “I often revise poems using my ‘shadow poems’ exercise detailed in the book Spellbound: The Art of Teaching Poetry. I take a poem, and then rewrite it in different ways or contexts: the poem’s shadow, the poem with mustard, the poem divorced, etc. This poem is the ‘shadow’ of ‘Breathe. As in.’, a response to Eric Garner’s murder by police, which was originally published in Transition magazine. Both poems are…
Mobile Photography & Art Saturday Poetry ‘This Morning I Pray for My Enemies’ by Joy Harjo with @ja_graham
This weeks Saturday Poetry, matched with mobile photography/art is entitled ‘This Morning I Pray for My Enemies’ by Joy Harjo. Harjo was appointed the new United States poet laureate in 2019. Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1951, Harjo is a member of the Mvskoke/Creek Nation. She is the author of several books of poetry, including An American Sunrise, which is forthcoming from W. W. Norton in 2019, and Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings (W. W. Norton, 2015). She is a current Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Source poets.org I have matched this image entitled ‘The Book of Tea’ – Kakuzo Okakura by @ja_graham…
Mobile Photography & Art Saturday Poetry – ‘I hope to God you will not ask’ by Esther Belin with M. Cecilia Sao Thiago
This weeks Saturday Poetry, matched with mobile photography/art is entitled ‘I hope to God you will not ask’ by Esther Belin. She explains, “this poem is an anagram poem using a phrase taken from Navajo headman, Barboncito, in his speech to General Sherman on May 28, 1868. As a citizen of the Navajo Nation, I am grateful to our leaders who had courage and vision to express our innate connection to our homeland, Diné bikéyah. This poem was inspired by the work of Terrance Hayes and his wonderful craft of anagram poetry.” Belin is the author two poetry collections, including Of Cartography (University of Arizona Press, 2017), and From the…
Mobile Photography & Art Saturday Poetry – ‘Instrument’ by Dao Strom with Sarah Bichachi
This weeks Saturday Poetry, matched with mobile photography/art is entitled ‘Instrument’. “I wrote this poem at the end of 2016. In the wake of the election, the phrase ‘burning-est woken of time’ spoke to a sense of urgency and self-questioning as to what kind of ‘instrument’ I would wish to be, and how. I remember there were a lot of words in the air at the time, rhetoric zinging back and forth on how to fight, resist, right and wrong ways to be, etc.—and maybe in response a part of me was craving a quieter version of myself, to be a conduit and hold channels open without falling prey to…
Mobile Photography & Art Saturday Poetry ‘After He’s Decided to Leave’ by Elizabeth Acevedo with Eliza Badiou
This weeks Saturday Poetry, matched with mobile photography/art is entitled ‘After He’s Decided to Leave’ by Elizabeth Acevdeo. Elizabeth Acevedo is author of THE POET X (HarperTeen, 2018), which won the 2018 National Book Award in Young People’s Literature. She holds a BA from The George Washington University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Maryland. Acevedo is a National Poetry Slam Champion and lives in Washington, D.C. Source poets.org I have matched this image by @elizabadoiu – Eliza Badoiu – entitled ‘Just an intuitive moment’, with this poem. You can view and follow her work on Instagram here. If you would like to be featured in…
