At the Literary Stage. Hosted by Caroline Goodwin, I’ll be there will David Perez — we’ll be representing Santa Clara County at our sister county’s fair.
I’ll be running with the poets tonight at the San Mateo County Fair! Should be fun. Come eat your corn dogs and hear you some poetry!
Photos from the event can be found at this July 19, 2014 post.
Last night (at the San Jose subZERO festival) I sat at a table writing poems on demand with key words provided by the poem demanders. It was fun. It was hard work, too, oh boy oh boy. One woman wrote that she wanted a poem about being anxious about the future, graduation, “but I love my hair.” I was intrigued, and wrote her a poem about her wonderful hair — even though she had disappeared and I had no idea what she looked like (by the time her poem prompt got to me, furiously typing behind the screen…).
Hair is a very sensual human characteristic, right up there with lips and eyes. People do love their hair. Or they hate it. Hair is the subject of song and painting, story and myth. And yes, there are many poems about hair. Go to The Poetry Foundation and type “hair” in the search box. Then limit the 1786 items found by “poem” and you still will be offered 1000 choices. Click this link if you don’t believe me.
So, your prompt today is to write about hair. Write about your hair, how much you like it, miss it, what it’s like to get it cut, the way it falls in your eyes when you’re working, or the way it falls across your lover’s cheek. Write about your lover’s hair. Write about the hair that flies across a garden to be found by a bird, making part of a nest. Write about cat hair on your best suit coat. You can do it.
If you need inspiration:
Or, if you’ve gotten this far in to this post, check out Lady Gaga singing “Hair” and then see if you can write a poem about something that means that much to you. (Have fun, love your Cup PL)
June 12 is “Loving Day” (every year) and this year I’ll be hosting the second poetry reading in my Unsung Holidays series. (Remember April Fool’s Day?)
“Loving Day” is an annual celebration held on June 12, the anniversary of the 1967 United States Supreme Court decision Loving v. Virginia which struck down all anti-miscegenation laws remaining in sixteen U.S. states citing “There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the equal protection clause.” According to the official website, there are official celebrations all over the world every year. This year, in Cupertino, we’re having a poetry reading.
I will be hosting, but the poems will belong to my three featured readers:
The reading will be at the Euphrat Museum, on De Anza College campus. 7-9 pm, open mic to follow. We hope you will join us!
I’ve embarked on a series of poems about my parents — in particular their early life together. I have visual memories, stories, photos, a few letters, and my memories of them as young people — and for some reason I am compelled to write about them now. It’s not an exercise in history as much as a way to orient myself in the overwhelming mythology of my childhood. And, no matter how much I want to ground the poems in reality, I can’t. There’s no reality left, just poetry.
Many remarkable poems exist about poets’ parents. Here are two of my favorites:
It can be daunting to write about your parents, so if you’re not sure how to begin, find an old photo of them. Imagine you are an unseen observer just outside the photo — what do you see? What sounds, smells, tastes are there? Is there music? What’s the weather like?
Have fun and don’t be afraid. Much of what we remember about our parents has nothing at all to do with us — they had lives we can never know. As Dar Williams sings about in her great song, “After All” —
Sometimes the truth is like a second chance
I am the daughter of a great romance
I can’t wait to see what you come up with! (Your ever hopeful Cup PL)
Cupertino Poet Laureate 