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Celebrating Living Poets: Sarah Kay

The first time I ever heard Sarah Kay perform “Hands,” I was speechless. She was young, polished, and profoundly moving in her delivery. She’s the living poet I’m celebrating today during the Slice of Life Challenge. Each poet’s collection has inspired me to take a selection of their existing lines and rearrange them, creating a Cento poem from their work.

Sarah quickly became a favorite, and one whose YouTube videos I share with my book club when I send out morning poems during National Poetry Month. Imagine my surprise when I learned that she was coming to Serenbe Pavilion in Chattahoochee Hills, Georgia this May! Serenbe is an hour from where I live – a Saturday night drive well worth the cost of a reserved seat. I can’t wait to hear her in person – I’m thinking of it as a small pre-retirement gift to myself to ignite the flame of all the poetry events I’ll finally be able to attend, even if they’re on weeknights. For today, I’m thumbing through A Little Daylight Left and indulging in the joy of her writing.

You can read more about Sarah Kay here; this link has her famous Ted Talk “If I Should Have a Daughter” embedded into the article with the interview.

My Cento:

These lines were taken from the following poems, in this order:

An additional thought today:

When I woke up and read a post this morning from Peter at Five Hundred a Day, I realized that I, too, have been fishing for the place my words are looking for (don’t miss his blog post today – it’ll bring a tear or two or a Kleenex full). In 2025, a colleague and I started an office book club. Recently, she has become a Silent Book Club host, and we have both seen our husbands, infrequent readers prior to this additional club, show up and take ownership in “their” book club. It has been a blessing, and as our ladies’ book club meets for our discussions and adventures, our husbands will go have dinner and discussions of their own. I made a mental note: there is something to showing up without expectation to discuss a book that appeals to folks..

I share all of this to say that like Peter, I’ve been fishing for an in-person writing group in my town and nearby smaller towns, and I found the Silent Book Club equivalent in a group called Shut Up & Write (SUAW). Each writing group where I can share with others is so unique, but one type of group I don’t have in my life and desperately need is in-person. I applied and have apparently made the cut, was approved as an organizer, and will complete my onboarding training during Spring Break in a week and a half. I’m casting my reel out to ask if anyone has attended a Shut Up & Write event and to ask for your experiences. I’d love to get your thoughts.

Ollie eats good poetry; hence two of these books appear more loved on.
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Celebrating Living Poets: Arthur Sze

I’m celebrating living poets this month as I write each day during March and share my blog on http://www.twowritingteachers.org during the Slice of Life Challenge. With each living poet’s work, I’m creating a cento by taking their existing lines of poetry from a selected collection and arranging them into a new poem. Arthur Sze is the current US Poet Laureate, and today I’m using his book Sight Lines. You can read more about him here.

Strawberry Breakfast

Yesterday, you constructed an aqueduct of dreams

dozens of tiny flames flickering into darkness

An unglazed pot fired and streaked from ash

Early morning light: a young red-tailed hawk

in cool Alpine air

in daylight, snow has accumulated

crossing the street, you hear the cry of a strawberry finch

the unfolding of a life has junctures

Each line was taken from existing poems in Sight Lines and arranged into an entirely new poem, in this order: First Snow; Spring: Winter Stars; Under a Rising Moon; Dawn Redwood; The Radiant’s; The Glass Constellation; In the Bronx; The Far Norway Maples.

Occasionally, people ask me about my process for writing Cento poems. I tell them about my homemade Cento sticks. As I read collections of poetry, I write lines I like onto large tongue depressors using Sharpie markers. On the back, I write the title of the poem and the poet. Next, I select lines I love and put them in a new order. You can see a video here and here, then see a finished product below. I also frequently mix poets together, but this month, I’m using lines from single collections by living poets. Try writing a cento! You’ll be amazed at how just moving one single line can change everything and put the world on a whole new axis.

Lines for this Cento poem were taken from these poems, in this order:

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Celebrating Living Poets: David Gate

This month during the Slice of Life Challenge at http://www.twowritingteachers.org, I’m celebrating a different living poet each day and using their work to create a cento poem. David Gate is a poet who lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Asheville, North Carolina and writes predominantly on themes of nature and the environment. You can read more about David Gate here and here.

When the Baby Goats are Dying

People say “money doesn’t make you happy”

when the baby goats are dying.

It tells you nothing.

They say to “stay strong.”

I always do.

Lines for this Cento were taken from: The Problem of Happiness; I Still Get to Be Yours; Curse these Minutes; Stay Strong; Winter’s Insistence

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Celebrating Living Poets: Billy Collins

If you’ve been following the celebration of living poets I’ve been adding to the circle each day, you just knew all along that this poet was coming to the party. Whenever I need to stop taking life so seriously but still keep the reality in perspective and blend in some humor, I reach for Billy Collins. He’s got me covered when it comes to a balm for the heart on weary days – which is pretty much every day when the pollen count is high and I have spring fever and work in a windowless cubicle. Oh, I have my Billy Collins favorites ~ Whale Day, Banana School, An Irish Spider.…all of them are as unique as his personality and just as engaging. He’s a former US Poet Laureate. In one of his writing videos somewhere in the past, I remember him saying, “Bring in a spider.” The spider is the metaphor for the unexpected zinger in a poem. I see them in his poems, all these spiders, and I strive for them in my own. It’s like that one secret ingredient that makes the poem come alive. You can read more about Billy Collins here on his website.

Worms Speak of a Narcissist

Surely, narcissism fails to capture

people on the street

and what you had been feeding me

just an expanse of white ink

pass through my special glasses, but not you.

Now, I am free of the collar

It’s the science of worms

near a breadcrumb on the curb

and, I swear, they began talking about you.

Lines for this Cento were taken from, in this order: Freud; Height; The Order of the Day; the Peasants’ Revolt; Special Glasses; The Revenant; The Introduction; Height; Carry

31 days of Living Poets in a tribute book stack – STANDING STRONG
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Celebrating Living Poets: Naomi Shihab Nye

Throughout the month of March, I’m celebrating a living poet each day. The living poet I’m reading today is Naomi Shihab Nye, and her collection of poems I’m using is Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners. I’m writing Cento poems, which are lines of existing poetry that are taken and put together to form a new poem, much like making a patchwork quilt.

Naomi Shihab Nye’s line from a poem was featured as last year’s National Poetry Month poet by Poems.org (if you have not requested your free one for this year, request it here before they run out – and you can also download it for a letter-size poster. I was pleasantly surprised that a former student from the school district where I work was the artist for last year’s poster. You can read about the artist Christy Mandin here.

When I read the full poem Gate A-4 by Nye from last year’s poster, my mind went back to the Albuquerque airport – the Sunport, from which we had flown back home to Georgia after driving half of Route 66 in June of 2024. That’s a small airport, and it’s the reason we chose it to fly home. When we do the other part of Route 66, we will fly into Los Angeles and out of Albuquerque, basically having completed Route 66 from both ends to the middle from each direction. In any case, I was seated on the wall opposite the check-in desks, and I could envision the entire scene of the poem playing out. It warmed my heart in all the best ways. I’d been right there. Right in that spot where the action in the poem happened. And I was grateful for the memory of being there to be able to “see” it so clearly. My Cento poem today is rooted in the bad news for the woman in the poem at Gate A-4. My last line is in response to how Naomi herself took the bad news and made it good.

Poets will do that.

You can read more about Naomi Shihab Nye here. As a member of the Stafford Challenge who will attend the first poetry conference in Oregon this June, you can believe that one of the speakers I’m most looking forward to hearing is Naomi Shihab Nye. I hear her appearances are rare, which already has me anticipating what a treasure of a moment this will be.

I use Cento sticks to capture golden lines, then rearrange them into new poems.

Bad News

What can you expect?

News loves to be bad

Poured full of ripe language

beneath each human move

What surprised you lately?

Lines for this cento were taken from these poems: The Tent; Moment of Relief; After Listening to Paul Durcan, Ireland; Showing Up; Where do Poets find Images?

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Celebrating Living Poets: Jericho Brown

He’s famous for inventing his own form of poem called the Duplex, and he’s a professor of writing and the Director of the Creative Writing Program at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia – a mere hour from where I live just south of where his pen graces his pages each day. I own his book The Tradition, but I couldn’t find it anywhere and am grateful that our public library in my small town had a copy. You must check out Jericho Brown, a Pulitzer Prize winning poet who is as real as poets get on a deeply personal level. I’ve written a cento poem using his existing lines from this collection to form a new poem below.

You can read more about Jericho Brown on his website, and here and here.

Two Words

A poem is a gesture toward home

or the woman for whom it was a gift.

None of our fights ended where they began.

Long ago, we used two words.

Lines taken from, in this order: Duplex; After Avery R. Young; Duplex: Cento; The Legend of Big and Fine.

A sneak peek of poets for days 20-31

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Celebrating Living Poets: Amanda Gorman

I was transfixed on the smiling poet delivering her poem with grace and poise at the Biden inauguration. Wearing a yellow coat, with red, she beamed and took the podium. When she spoke, I was speechless, mesmerized. Her name is Amanda Gorman, and her poetry is healing. Our nation needs a spoonful – perhaps a bottle full – of Amanda Gorman right now. You can read more about Amanda Gorman here and here. I’ve composed a Cento poem using Gorman’s lines from various poems, listed beneath the poem. Her words: Pay Attention. Learn from them. are words I will carry into the day.

We Rouse Ghosts

Even as we stand stone-still

we rouse ghosts ~

A grandma on a porch fingers her rosaries.

This truth, like the white-blown sky.

What endures isn’t always what escapes.

Pay attention.

Learn from them.

Taken from: The Shallows; Who We Gonna Call; The Miracle of Morning; & So; Cordage, or Atonement; Hephaestus; In the Deep

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Celebrating Living Poets: Joy Harjo

The living poet I’m celebrating today is Joy Harjo, our National Poet Laureate from 2019 to 2022. Harjo is a Native American poet who writes about nature, sky, and origins. I am using her existing lines from The Woman Who Fell from the Sky to create a Cento poem.

You can read more about Joy Harjo here.

Night Sky

From the moon we all look the same

When the earth makes a particularly hard turn

When embers from the sacred middle are climbing out the other side of stars

Wings of night sky

Or is it the shadow of a woman on the run?

Lines taken from the poems, in this order: Promise; The Song of the House in the House; The Place the Musician Became a Bear; The Dawn Appears with Butterflies; Witness

Sneak peek of poets coming days 21-31
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Celebrating Living Poets: Kate Baer

She’s a poet with a playlist for everything. She finds messages of wisdom in her hate mail replies and turns it into found poetry. She’s a mother, a wife, and a writer, and she’ll make you stop and think. The living poet I’m celebrating today is Kate Baer, who was first recommended to me by my friend and small group writing buddy Glenda Funk. I started with her collection I Hope This Finds You Well and then read all the others, and I’m anxiously awaiting whatever comes next. Hers are dessert poems with a bit of a sharp kick, like a tangy lemon tart or a bowl of the sweetest watermelon sprinkled with Tajin. It hits you square in the womanhood solidarity in its delicious aftertaste.

You can read more about Kate Baer here. Be sure to scroll down deep enough in the article to listen to her playlists – they’re all linked, and I leave her writing playlist on repeat whether I’m writing or working in my cubicle with my noise-cancelling headphones (perfect for when a colleague is making a phone call or having a conversation).

Advice on writing from Kate can be found here. Another interview here.

Snapshot

The moment before the photograph

you turn and lift your face

in the blue eye of winter

fat with love, drunk with adoration

eyes up, arms out

walk out into the evening and sing

no music. Just the world and all its noise. You.

I never wanted anything more than you.

Taken from: The Bridesmaid’s Song; After; Today; Grown Alice; Undivided Attention; The Protagonist Remembers; How it Will Happen; For My Son on His 13th Birthday.

Poets for Days 11-20
Another Sneak Peek of what has been and what’s to come…..
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Celebrating Living Poets: Hannah Rosenberg

The living poet I’m celebrating on this 19th day of The Slice of Life Challenge at Twowritingteachers.org is Hannah Rosenberg. She is the author of the collection entitled Same, containing poems from which I am using her existing lines to create an original Cento poem.

You can read more about Hannah Rosenberg on her website. Or, follow her on Instagram at @hannarowrites. You can also read this interview to learn more about Hannah.

Souls of Women

My life is filled with the souls of women.

They made pasta and Alfredo sauce, bought chips,

building a life we knew was fleeting.

It’s nice to know there are people out there, even if they are not.

Taken from: Marriage of Friends; Once Upon a Time in an Apartment in Boston; Roommates in my Twenties; Always at Home with Them.

A Sneak peek of living poets Days 11-20