Kindred

On talented friends and connections

I count myself lucky to have a community of friends who are poets and writers, people who encourage me when I’m doubting, people who will read my drafts and not let me get away with being lazy, people who (like I was for most of my writing life) are teachers who are writing amazing poems in the small moments of the day between their students and their own families. I’ve been reminded of that in many ways this week, the ways that, over miles, we are connected.

This was a week where parents were on the mind of many poet friends. I traded abcderian drafts with Jared Beloff (poet/teacher/friend) and both of us, on the same day, miles apart, wrote poems that spoke of our fathers and faith.

Also this week, Joan Kwon Glass (poet/teacher/friend) shared her poem that was featured in Mayday. (Go read it. You won’t be sorry.) The poem “Blind Fish” details a moment with a father, one that is bittersweet.

I just finished listening to Leah Umansky (poet/teacher/friend) read from her new collection Of Tyrant on Zoom, poems about reclaiming voices, about a world where tyrants intrude on joy. The first poem she read revolved around a scene with a mother and a small girl. You can feel both the tension and care of parenthood in the poem.

Alina Stefanescu (poet/teacher/friend) read at the same reading, and her poem about losing her mother, about wearing her mother’s favorite perfume as a protective talisman, made me tear up a little. She is also one of the most generous people I know in the poetry world - the resources on her website alone could nurture a poet for weeks.

These are just a few examples of the connections that keep me writing. I always say that I’m not going to attempt writing a poem a day in April, but then here I am, following along with a form calendar created by Taylor Byas and Seamus Fey.

Whether you write poems or your passions lie elsewhere, threads that connect you to those who share your interests are a wonderful feeling. I have not even scratched the surface of the people who weave those strands for me—in fact, I haven’t even mentioned three of my closest friends in the whole world who are also creators, people who support me in every way, not just as a poet. (They know who they are.) Maybe tomorrow I’ll draft a triptych about them. Maybe not.

Prompt:

Make a list of at least four people who connect with you around a passion. Try to be broad in the way you think about connections. If you’re a writer, do you share drafts? Text one another when you have news, good or bad? Encourage you when you’re feeling discouraged? Teach you new things that you hadn’t thought about before to enrich your work? All of the above?

Now use the names of one of those people as an acrostic for a poem. Include the words thread and connection in your poem.