Last night, I helped co-facilitate an online writing marathon session through the National Writing Project’s Write Across America project, and in connection with the coming Write Out project. Our focus was on the Connecticut River Valley of Western Massachusetts, and poetry (although participants could write what they wanted). My facilitators were Harriet K. (a colleague with the Western Massachusetts Writing Project) and Ranger Wes (of the Springfield Armory National Historic Site).
We used this StoryMap that I developed over the summer, with pins and points of poets in our part of Massachusetts. (The map was a hit! Phew.)
Two of the poems I wrote last night were connected to a pin for the Poet’s Seat Tower, a brick tower where poets used to walk to, to write in peace and solitude.
The first poem, above, used the metaphor of the bricks of the tower. The second poem, below, was inspired by a link to an Herbarium space, and its digital collections (which are amazing) and the space for glass slides of the anatomy of trees.
Peace (from every place),
Kevin