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SFPA Valentine’s Day Poetry Readings

Despite being an introvert, I love the oral tradition of poetry. (Perhaps I love it best in a darkened home office, in the hours before midnight, with only cats and my glowing Yeti microphone as witnesses.)

I love how a reading often transforms a poem. When I listen to other poets, I find something new in their work (what a great collection to enjoy in this SFPA Valentine’s Day offering!). When I read my work aloud, I hear something different than I did when the words were quiet voices in my head.

I also love the accessibility of audio. For the past week, I’ve been struggling with minor vision impairment–a condition I expect to be temporary–enough to sensitize me to the loss of vision afflicting someone close to me, to students I’ve taught who relied on audio.

I have a couple of poems (with companion photographs) in the current SFPA Valentine’s Reading. Both poems are from my ‘Before Times” — a period earlier in my career when I first made space for poetry to be a major part of my life. Neither poem celebrates classic romance, focusing instead on more complicated kinds of love.

Love that involves the need for a better vacuum cleaner: A Lasso Around It was published on its debut outing in Star*Line and appears in two collections (Constellation and The Women of Myth). It was fun to read.

The love we have for our planet–a ‘complicated relationship’ in the era of climate change: Mother Nature appeared first in Aoife’s Kiss in 2008. I’ve performed it before, but this reading felt more radical than it has in the past. After all, I wrote it in my “Before Times,” before I learned to become a force of nature to advocate for a planet where we all continue to exist.

“…this is the hot mama / who gives birth to the wind, slings her tattooed legs / around the seat of the Harley, hair billowing behind her / as she drives straight for the heart of the hurricane.”

Both photographs are from Florida: the moon as seen from Anna Maria Island before AMI took poundings from Hurricanes Helen and Milton; and CoCo Plum Beach on the oft-ravaged Keys, a storm on the horizon.

Earth is quite the ‘hot mama’ these days, with a fever of 1.5C. We’re all on this wild ride with her. It might be our doom.

“The antidote to doom is do-ing,” Michael Mann just reminded me.

#BloomScrolling #viburnum