action poetry

Meanwhile, in the world of advertising, poetry takes the stage with some remarkable athletes in a series of ads for Under Armour, the performance apparel gear company. The “Unlike Any” ads feature athletes Misty Copeland, Natasha Hastings, Jessie Graff, Alison Désir, and Zoe Zhang, with poets Saul Williams, Dominique Christina, Kojey Radical, Aja Monet, and Aristophanes, respectively. Read the story in Adweek and watch/listen.

Elsewhere in healthcare headlines…

We are happy to see that in the UK, “The All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Arts, Health and Wellbeing said doctors should be encouraged to refer patients to art classes and poetry workshops.”

Read the article in The Telegraph and this testimonial about the health benefits of poetry, in The Guardian.

Click to see more poetry prescription stories in The Poetry Department.

Ready…set…Marathon!

If you are planning to participate in the 2017 Poetry Marathon or half-marathon, signups begin tomorrow, Thursday, July 20 at Noon Eastern Time, and continue through July 27. The full marathon will take place on Saturday, August 5, starting at 9:00 a.m. ET, and it will conclude at 9:00 a.m. ET on Sunday the 6th. The half marathon will run from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. on August 5. Each poet must write and publish on the blog one poem per hour. To register, go to The Poetry Marathon website or watch for the link on the Poetry Marathon Facebook page.

WA129 featured poems

Humanities Washington has launched a feature series, posting selected poems from WA129, the anthology compiled by Poet Laureate Tod Marshall. The first three poets are Sherman Alexie, Mary Eliza Crane, and Claudia Castro Luna. Visit Part I of the series and subscribe to stay in the loop on Humanities Washington goings-on.

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Cascades train track. Photo: Alex Robert

This week: Take Your Poet to Work Day

Take Your Poet to Work Day is this Wednesday, July 19, 2017, and Tweetspeak Poetry has plenty of swag to make it easy and fun. In addition to a new set of ready-for-work poets, there’s also a printable coloring book and a swell infographic.

Reverie*

2017 Merit Award
By Marie Marchand

Poems come to me in the dark
when my eyes are healed
when I do not distinguish
my body from the air.
          In a dream the poems come.

When I awake the words fall
from my skin and I forget
the misty-eyed soliloquies
I’d composed like Keats
          though I remember him.

I always remember John Keats
who led me through the forest
to the Emerald inside the rock
our true love carved in stone.
Holding his hand I traipsed in the wake
of his tousled amber hair.
          He wrote odes among the trees for me.

When you believe in reincarnation
anything is possible.
Love can be written
          centuries apart.

. . . . .
Marie Marchand has been a poet full of passion for 30 years. Her love for John Keats, which she imagines to be reciprocal, is what inspired her winning poem “Reverie.” She tries to make the world a better place by doing small things like stopping the resumption of below-ground testing at the Nevada Desert Test Site. She is the board chair of the local affiliate of National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) and works for the Bellingham City Council. She has a Masters Degree from The Iliff School of Theology. Her poetry often explores and intersects with faith. She and her 16-year-old son have lived in Bellingham for 12 years. Her poetry blog is MarieMarchandPoet.

. . . . .
*Copyright 2017 by Marie Marchand. Broadside illustrated by Christian Smith.

IMPORTANT notice

Sherman Alexie has cancelled all of the stops on his book tour from August onward.

You can read his open letter here.