Night Fishing at Antibes poem

 Hello and Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure to visit Sarah Grace Tuttle for Roundup.

First and foremost: THANK YOU, poets, for your support of the Poetry & Punctuation webinar earlier this week through Inked Voices. (Isn't Brooke fabulous?) I loved our time together and appreciate the opportunity to learn with all of you! 

Also: if you have other topics you'd be interested in learning with me, would you please let me know in comments or email? irene (at) irenelatham (dot) com. Thank you!

In celebration of Mother's Day, I offer everyone a video of Great Horned owl Athena feeding her owlets. Y'all, it is the sweetest!

Today's ArtSpeak: PICASSO is after a pretty stunning and memorable piece. Watch this 8-minute video about it, and your life will be changed! 

I guess I've got fishing on my mind. Spring is a great time for it! 

And not just fishing for fish. How 'bout fishing for poems? 

I hope this poem feels relevant, whatever your metaphorical "fish." Thanks so much for reading.

Night Fishing at Antibes

and I would give you
a boat to anchor
your heart

a lantern
to illuminate
your courage

a blade to sharpen
your purpose

and a red-swirl
galaxy of gratitude

when your spear
pierces
its first fish

- Irene Latham

Mirror, Mirror on the wall poem

Hello and Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure to visit Mary Lee at A(nother) Year of Reading for Roundup.

Hooray, it's May! 

I have A LOT going on this month, including traveling today to Atlanta to hang out with my good buddy Charles at Little Shop of Stories' Children's Book Festival.

 We'll be schmoozing with the other authors (Katherine Applegate! Dave Eggers!) and presenting to kids and families about If I Could Choose a Best Day. YAY!

Last call for the Poetry & Punctuation workshop through Inked Voices!

Today's ArtSpeak: PICASSO was no doubt partly shaped by a few recent things:

1. The Dangerous Old Woman: Myths and Stories of the Wise Woman Archetype audio series byClarissa Pinkola Estes (Soundstrue)

2. Beastly Beauty by Jennifer Donnelly ( a retelling of Beauty of the Beast in which the boy is the beauty and the girl is the beast!)

And...I can't title a poem "Mirror, Mirror" without thinking of Marilyn Singer and her marvelous reverso poem collections! Thanks so much for reading.

Mirror, Mirror

by Irene Latham

Mirror, Mirror on the wall,
you don’t know me at all!
My heart beats red
inside its cage,
my lungs are purple balloons.
Beneath my skin swells
an ocean of orange experience.
Even my eyes—
those soul windows—
cannot show you
my ten thousand skies
pulsing with stars, birdstorm
and great flashes of lightning.
Mirror, Mirror on the wall
you don't know me at all.