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Could your heart use a lift? Call the Healing Verse Poetry Line! This week, if you call 1-855-POEMRX2, you’ll hear me reading. Follow @philacontemporary for updates on new entries. New poems drop on the line every Monday!

I was one of many poets who contributed to a beautiful book, Writing the Land: Currents, giving voice to 22 lands from across the country. I wrote for the Colorado Land Trust about the Potter Ranch located between Ridgway and Ouray in southwest Colorado. Thanks to Lis McLoughlin for her …

Sometimes the kindness of others changes everything we know about the world, about humanity. This poem, published on January 4, 2023 in the incredible online journal Vox Populi, shares an encounter in the cemetery that broke me wide open with its tenderness. I think of our blood-soaked history, of our …

How do we fall in love the world, even when it feels difficult? In this 20-minute poetry reading, followed by a brief conversation and Q & R, I explore this in poetry. This reading, hosted by the wonderful Larry Robinson, aired on zoom on December 10, 2022. Poems read: Becoming …

“Mom,” says my teenage daughter, “real life is not poetic.” That was the prompt for me to create a poetic exploration of how we might meet a day when I was featured for Bardic Trails, hosted by Joanna Spindler, zoomed on December 6, 2022. A twenty minute poetry reading is …

Thank you to the amazing Daiva Chesonis who designed this broadside for my recent feature on Bardic Trails. (Apricity is an archaic word that means the warmth of midwinter sun). Apricity The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green Earth in the …

How have your prayers changed your life? I am very aware of two that have touched everything–and that’s what this poem is about, published November 27, 2022, in the wonderful Vox Populi, curated by Michael Simms I wrote it during a poetry deep dive led by the luminous Kim Rosen. …

Speaking about silence? A paradox, of course, but a joyful exploration. I had the chance to join Raghu Markus on the Be Here Now Network for an hour-long podcast in which we speak about poetry as a spiritual path, meeting loss, transformation and trust, and being a wide-open listener. Listen …

I learned more about my own poems by watching ASL interpreter Joe Moore bring them into their face & hands and body. What a gift to watch them and another interpreter, too, Nico, accompany me, Sandra Gill and Jon Lee in an evening of poems that touch on family, history, …

How do we find harmony in such a polarized world? I am so grateful to Naomi Horii for inviting me to be her first guest on HeartSpeaks on Bold Brave TV. We spend an hour reading poems, talking about practical and poetic ways to live (and thrive) in the middle …