Never Have I Ever

Never Have I Ever

Never have I ever:
Seen the Green Flash at sunset
Held St. Elmo’s Fire in my hand
Swayed with Aurora Borealis, undulating,
Howled at a full moon while singing to the stars above –
But I have seen emerald fire in your eyes
Felt lightning in your kiss,
Swayed to the music of your hips
Inhaled your breath as it
Caressed my tongue, warm and salty,
As like the moon,
I pulled your crashing waves
Against my shore.

— Holly Jahangiri (April 15, 2023)

Today’s Poets

Grace Nichols – a Guyanese poet who moved to Britain in 1977, before which she worked as a teacher and journalist in Guyana. Her first collection, I is a Long-Memoried Woman (1983), won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize. In December 2021, she was announced as winner of the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry. Read more here.

To My Coral Bones poem – Grace Nichols (best-poems.net)Praise Song for My Mother poem – Grace Nichols (best-poems.net)Naomi Shahib Nye

–  an American poet, editor, songwriter, and novelist. Born to a Palestinian father and an American mother, she began composing her first poetry at the age of six. Read more here.

Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye – Poems | Academy of American Poets

April is National Poetry Month. This year marks its 27th year. NaPoWriMo – 30 days of writing poems – is poets’ answer to National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).

This coincides with the A to Z Blogging Challenge, now celebrating its 13th anniversary. Some participants choose a theme; others wing it. Doesn’t matter! The real challenge is to build a practice of writing daily. I think I stuck with it…once. You can see the list of participants – I’m sure they’d love it if you’d visit and comment on their blogs.

This month, my goal is to:

1. Write a poem a day and share it – uncurated – here; and
2. Highlight some poets you may be unfamiliar with.

I encourage you to click the links to read about them and their work. I plan to choose a diverse array of classical and contemporary poets – indigenous poets, Black poets, women poets, LGBTQ poets – that challenge us to see the world differently while also tapping into universal themes and emotions.

Remember, too, that comments and conversation are always welcome here. (Spammers, on the other hand, will be tossed into the moat or mocked, so before you leave an irrelevant comment or drop a link, consider that it’s fair game!)