January Column

(Published in The Evening Sun on January 30, 2010)

With great honor and respect for those who came before me, I undertake my first column as Hanover's Poet Laureate. When Dana Larkin Sauers began her tenure as Poet Laureate, she sent out her "Letter to the World." This article, mailed to me in Virginia by my mother, became essentially the first words of our friendship. I wrote back, met her at Reader's Cafe, and the rest is history. Our friendship, fueled by poetry, has branched into my friendship with the other former Poets Laureate: Michael Hoover and Anna Bowman. The close relationships I forged with them began with the words of this column, and I hope to act as a similar link, bringing people together for the sake of words.

There is no doubt that poetry has become a mainstay in Hanover culture. The circle of Hanover Poets continues to grow in number and talent. I must say that without the work of the former Poets Laureate, the work I plan to do would not be possible. You have set a rock-hard foundation, and I hope to continue to build upon this throughout my tenure as Poet Laureate.

Though I currently do not live in Hanover, it will always be home to me, the place where I developed my character. I grew up on a horse farm just south of Hanover, and I carry that heritage along everywhere I go:

Poem for Hanover


It's a risk being from anywhere.
I am from soil and of soil.

When someone mentions birth, placenta,
I think horse, not human.
The first placenta I saw and carried in a bucket was my mare's.
She was okay with this, because I sang her calm,
the scent of my breath close to her nostrils.
Meanwhile, my father buried it in the woods
away from the dog.

A year later, we gelded the colt.
My sister, a pre-vet major, stored the testicles in a jar to study them.
I bragged about them to my friends at school and
my 6th grade crush turned from the front of the auditorium
to embarrass me during chorus.

I began to like him the day we helped our dads haul sawdust.
When they asked us to sweep the beds of the trucks together,
I hummed The Judds
and thought, What a great story to tell at our wedding!

I am from tradition, but of grit.
That's why I can take a shot of tequila without the lime or salt,
why I can discuss butchering during a meal.
That's why I can taste when the soil is fertile and dark,
ready for my knees.




As I begin to plant my own seeds as Poet Laureate, I have assembled a list of several goals to accomplish during my tenure. First, I will institute a Hanover Poet Laureate blog and facebook page. Since I live and work in Chicago, my visits back to Hanover for programming will be limited. However, in this technological age, I see no reason why we can't continue to build relationships to poetry and our community wherever we are.

The blog and facebook page will act as the main communications between you and me; however, I will also facilitate poetry-related activities each time I am in the Hanover area. Plans for my work include leading poetry workshops and competitions within the schools, publishing local work on the blog, and challenging the community to take part in Hanover's growing poetry scene. Please check out my blog at http://poetlaureatehanover.blogspot.com, and find me on facebook under “Hanover Poet Laureate.”

Whether you are someone who reads every day, or someone who hasn't read a poem since high school, you cannot deny that our world is packed full of relationships, metaphors, comparisons. Our world is essentially full of poetry. The challenge is to see how this art manifests itself in our lives and to record it on the page. We all have the capacity to notice and record; in fact, we are all poets in this act alone.