Fulfilling my obligations to my long-neglected TBR one book a time. Want to know why? I explain it in the first post here. Posting striking lines daily on BlueSky

This issue of “Poetry” features writers who were involved in the Fire & Ink Festival back in the early 2000’s. The event’s official name was the “Fire & Ink Writers Festival for GLBT People of African Descent” which took place four times in Chicago, Austin, and Detroit between 2002 and 2015.

I have been involved in organizing a few poetry festival type events over the years as well as a long-running monthly poetry reading series that started back in 2000. I know the feeling of seeing a gap and a need and have felt the energy to fill that void well up in my own stomach more than once. I also know how quickly the energy to sustain an event can wane. The tide pulling out, leaving your insides drying in the sun. And what we have done with our small, mainstream, local events pales in comparison to organizing a national festival, let alone a festival for these marginalized I can’t even imagine the energy that must have taken!

And that is what I took away from this week’s slow read: the energy. The energy to create in an environment which values consumption over connection, the energy to make a community when there is so much (physical distance the least of which) trying to separate us, the energy to share, to celebrate, to be gloriously, magnificently visible when it would be so much easier to just not.

If you follow me over on over on BlueSky you already know I post lines I find striking every day as I slowly read through one book or issue each week. This week, I would like to draw your attention to these lines from the poem “Meta” by the Reverend Robin G. White:

The arms carrying the wounded
And the hearts carrying their prayers
The church bells in the distance
And the train whistle calling memory home

This is why I read and why I read poetry, slowly.