In 1999, UNESCO proclaimed March 21 as World Poetry Day and in 2016 Twitter resurrected poetry. We believe that literary works are integral to scholarship and in the concise, succinct, and reflective words that form poetry there is a vast expanse of knowledge. For International Women’s Day, we shared excerpts written by women about women. Today, we are sharing excerpts from poets on poetry for World Poetry Day.
Embark on this pilgrimage in the midst
of your father’s passing. Start
a poem for your father, two weeks after he dies,
and title it tawâw, but leave it
for a year because it’s just too hard to write.
Tell Cree people why you,
a môniyâskwêw,
try to write poetry in Cree and English. Tell
them in nêhiyawêwin as they lean
toward your crude Cree, trying
to understand, trying to give you some of their loss.
Speak these words, over and over, rehearsing them until you know
you sound fluent:
ninôhtê-nêhiyawân ayisk ê-kî-pakaskît nohtâwîpan. ayîki-sâkahikanihk
ohci wiya mâka môya ê-kî-nêhiyâwit, kî-môniyâwiw.
êkwa mîna ê-âpihtawikosisâniskwêwit nikâwiy.
–an excerpt from “The Road to Writer’s Block (A Poem to Myself)” by Naomi McIlwraith (kiyâm 2012)
if your words fall into her ear
and you are in the same room
the one with the column of cds
the heater that eats logs
the walls insulated with books of poetry
–an excerpt from “the voice of Anne” by Don Kerr (The dust of just beginning 2010)
That kind of plank will not do in poetry
A cove is not a cave, a poet not a farmer.
The tired sublimity of words refuses
To make love an eclogue, to hoe laurel.
No matter what the troubadours said
Love, knowing absence, is in heart as much as head.
–an excerpt from Musing by Jonathan Locke Hart (2011)
chrysanthemum moon —
the poet’s bald head shines
above his poems.
my reflection wavers
in the leisurely current.
–an excerpt from Windfall Apples by Richard Stevenson (2010)
How disappointing she was
in the end
after months of poetry
lifting her up on a pillar to the sun
to laze amongst the Gods in infamy
chase after narrow escape after chase!
What a shock to realize
she was anything but
a God!
–an excerpt from “Beneath” by Leopold McGinnis (Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea 2011)
