President's Message

Reunions with Poetry: More Than Ham and Jello

"Ink runs from the corners of my mouth. There is no happiness like mine. I have been eating poetry." - Mark Strand "Your absence has gone through me like thread through a needle. Everything I do is stitched with its color." - W.S. Merwin

Reunions. Despite what you think when you walk in the door smelling the delicious delicacies someone made for dinner, they're about more than food. Over the past weeks, gatherings with family and friends have become nearly a guarantee, no matter what your feelings are about reunions. They can be long-awaited, dreaded, anxiety-producing, joyous or all of the above. You may have experienced a distortion of time during a reunion: the hours may have flown by too fast, or they may have painstakingly crept along. You may have discovered unexpected information about a person dear to you, or your previous thoughts and experiences about a person or a group of people may have been affirmed. At the end of the day, you may have decided to accelerate the schedule for the next reunion. Life is short, why wait!

The word "reunion" was very present for me last month during Poetry on the Prairie. It was wonderful to speak with familiar Perry organizers, to take part in workshops and listen to readings by IPA friends. But during Sunday's Lyrical Iowa reading, the gathering of dear poet friends filled me with all of the warmth and affection of the best reunions. How wonderful it was to meet again with past and present writing partners, those fellow poets who I have shared work with for years. What a marvelous experience to hear their new work, along with work I remember, and to celebrate with the entire group of the best of Lyrical Iowa 2024. I am grateful for Marilyn Baszczynski's work in putting out the call to these winning poets, and I am grateful to Poetry Palooza and Art on the Prairie for making this event possible. I have come to appreciate the importance of these celebrations-these reunions-and what they mean to poets.

Recently I finished the first draft of a new collection as part of my MFA work. I have been revising individual poems for quite some time as part of this work, but to see it come together as a single creative project was both delightful and vexing. I appreciated the synergy between poems, but some of the reunions of old poems lacked the energy and voice I had imagined. As I continue working on this project, a reunion and reflection upon who I was as a poet over the past two years will be useful work.

As winter progresses, I hope you find time to reunite with your older poems. What do you imagine you will learn about yourself as a writer in doing so? This time of year is also excellent for reuniting with your favorite poetry collections and anthologies. What is it about engaging with the familiar during this post-holiday season? Do we long for stasis in the face of change? For me, moments of solitude reunite me with my poetic, writerly self. Layers of emotion and insight embedded in these snippets of time are fruitful for writing. I hope you engage with your seasonal discoveries over the next weeks. The new year is waiting for a poem!

Wishing you the best in 2025,
Dawn

January 2025

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