Sports and Spiders!

 Hello and Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure to visit Margaret at Reflections on the Teche for Roundup.

This week's Tuesday 2-Minute Writing Tip 28 "Contracts, Not Handshakes" touches upon the business side of writing and includes a real-life cautionary tale.

Next Tuesday (March 3, 2026) is the release date for For the Win: Poems Celebrating Phenomenal Athletes, poems selected by Irene Latham and Charles Waters, brought to us by the good folks at Carolrhoda/Lerner Publishing Group. 

Y'all, I am not a sports person. (POETRY is my sport!) This anthology was Charles' idea, and I, pretty much always being up for a challenge, said yes! 

I do love sports stories and athlete stories (and the Olympics!), which are so like creator-stories, all full of dreams and training and setbacks and inspiration and achievement...and I love how this book showcases moments from ALL of it, not just the glory days.

So much gratitude to the following poets—and the athletes!—who were a dream to work with:

Jaime Adoff - Mookie Betts

Lacresha Berry - A’ja Wilson

Jay Brazeau - Connor McDavid

JaNay Brown-Wood - LeBron James

Tanita S. Davis - Simone Biles

Mariana Dominé - Lionel Messi

Naaz Khan - Aprar Hassan

Irene Latham - Nelly Korda

Nancy Tupper Ling - Eileen Gu

Guadalupe García McCall - Juan Soto

Edna Cabcabin Moran - Roman Reigns

Darius Phelps - Patrick Mahomes

Glenis Redmond- Coco Gauff

Kim Rogers - Keenan Allen (Lumbee)

René Saldaña - Ronald Acuña, Jr.

Laura Shovan and Leah Henderson - Sophia Smith

Sarah Grace Tuttle - Jessica Long

Charles Waters - Jalen Hurts

Kao Kalia Yang - Suni Lee

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If I were really on top of things, I might have coordinated my ArtSpeak: WOMEN poem this week with For the Win and gone with a sports theme. But, that's not how my creativity rolls (at least not this week :)!

Today's poem is inspired by a new-to-me artist from the Harper's Bazaar list: Louise Bourgeois. What a fascinating person! Learn more about Louise and the piece I selected, titled "Maman." Louise used her art to face her fears, a theme that came into my poem.

Again, if I were really on top of things, this piece would have been perfect for my interview earlier this month with Shannon Bramer, who shared about her "Dollhouse Spiders."  Alas. But the beauty of ye ol' internet is one can revisit old posts, so yay! Thanks so much for reading.

Today my friend Louise placed me 

in the center of the world

No more shadows for you, she said, and stroked my head
with her sculptor-fingers. Show them your tenderness,
your mender-heart perched on dancer-legs.
Fear set my toes a-tremble. You want me to stitch for them,
to spin? Louise's smile came soft-sudden as sunshine 

after snow. Let them look at you, she said.
Let them look at you until they can no longer look away.

- Irene Latham