A. Anupama
Wind speed is a factor. The more you can use it, the better. To be airborne, born into poetic flow, and fluid with each gesture, we need to embrace experiences. In artistic practice at our best and most honest, we trace the line of flight from birth to death. We balance on life’s axis. I’m…
Counting syllables, counting on images to carry you, counting the stanzas in the back of your mind, counting on soul to show up in the lines. Do we count the number of fishermen laughing in January chill along the river while on our Sunday walk, and do we count on the river to carry away…
The way ice falls on us during winter holidays fills the imagination with shapes. Single-digit cold and drift-covered roads meant dangerous driving from home to hometown for me and many others this week. But I'm stubborn (as most poets inevitably must be). The pastoral mood exerted its irresistible pull, and we braved salted highways and…
I had forgotten about the way I kept “teaching shoes” in my car after this year-and-a-half in virtual classrooms. It’s so good to be with students, in living presence, and there’s no equivalent for it. Now that the school semester is fully underway, most of my thought and energy is in the lectures, discussions, assignments.…
If suns grew in a field together, would they get along? If stars fell into fields, would we memorialize them? If the crescent moon mowed the field, what kind of hay would that make? Poems are made of heat, light, consciousness. On a hot day in August like this, maybe poems get lost. Maybe in…
I like to think of literature and the creative writing process itself as a type of habitat for emotions. We can reserve a space of quiet, practice the discipline of gardeners, and protect our observational vantage points from those who might disturb the sanctuary. But does anyone know where an emotion comes from or where…
My son’s supervisor at his summer internship in New Jersey is Indian, and suddenly my son says to me that he’d like to read more about India. His aim, I suppose, is to have more to talk about at work. But, being the ever-annoying poet-mom, I replied, “you can always know more about India, but…
Sometimes a song does it. I'll suddenly remember being together with a group of people, playing a game or writing some poems, sharing food and drink. We've been watching some classic musical films at my house for that very reason: nostalgia for the simple joy of just being together. Today, not one but TWO in-person…
It's as necessary to listen to rain, and then to go for a walk in it, as it is to sit down with pen and notebook. I'm writing a poem in hope of unraveling my thoughts about the shootings in Atlanta this week. Imagine how snarled up those thoughts are for many, between experience and…
Hearing new writing, even before the ink has dried, before the coffee has turned cold, we imagine bright lights into a newly formed sky. In the free-write group that I host every Friday afternoon, I invite participants to engage with a simple writing prompt for a 15-minute composition (it usually goes a little longer). Then…
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