When I Was a River poem

 Hello and Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure to visit Rose at Imagine the Possibilities for Roundup.

Quick update: I had a great time at SCBWI Wisconsin! So many thanks to everyone who made it a successful event. Here's a pic of me with Pat Zietlow Miller, who was also on faculty.

While in Wisconsin I visited John Michael Kohler Art Center & the Preserve to get a folk art fix! It was amazing. They hired artists to create art in the washrooms (aka "bathrooms")! So much fun! More on this soon.

Come In! Come In! Wordspinners to Welcome You Home releases next Tuesday! I got my contributor copies in the mail (finally!), and the book is even more beautiful than I imagined. I love it. ❤️

Today's ArtSpeak: Women comes from the Hudson River School of artists: Susie Barstow. (I hope to write after art by more of these women in the near future!)

I wanted to write a found poem from one of Susie's quotes, but I just couldn't get there! However, a phrase from that failed attempt stuck: "when I was a river." And I thought, hmm, now that's interesting...and I started writing! I wrote A LOT. It became a long, meandering river of a poem, which is great! And also not-great, because for this ArtSpeak! series, the poems must be pithy and fit on the graphic I create. So I scaled it waaayyy back, and voila! I will play with this phrase some more. Fun! Thanks so much for reading.

When I Was a River

I plunged over boulders

without fear.

I didn't need to know where

I was going or how long I'd flow.

Whenever light asked me to dance,

I said yes, a thousand times, yes.

I stopped for no one—

you could hear me singing

all 

the way 

down.

- Irene Latham