Have you signed up to be a DIY MFA Radio Insider yet? This is an exciting new monthly newsletter especially for our podcast listeners. Every month, you’ll get an email from our podcast producer with recaps of the most recent episodes, a curated Listening List of episodes on a particular theme, and other fun goodies we only share via email. Best of all, it’s free to join! The theme for April is Word Choice and Micro Craft, and you can become an insider by signing up with your email at diymfa.com/insiders.

In this episode Danielle Mitchell and Lori discuss:

• Adding emotional stakes to poems to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary.
• The magic of tapping into things you don’t understand.
• Her process for annotating poems and poetry collections.

Plus, her #1 tip for writers.

About Danielle Mitchell

Danielle Mitchell (she/her) is an intersectional feminist, poet, and teaching artist. She is the Founding Director of The Poetry Lab, an online learning platform that rallies in service of working-class writers around the globe. Danielle is the author of Makes the Daughter-in-Law Cry, winner of the Clockwise Chapbook Prize (Tebot Bach, 2017). Her poems have appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Vinyl, Four Way Review, Transom, New Orleans Review, Nailed Magazine and others. Danielle has received scholarships to travel to Patmos Island, Greece to study poetry, as well as grants from Poets & Writers and the Ashaki M. Jackson No Barriers Grant from the Women Who Submit. She is the inaugural winner of the Editor’s Prize from Mary Magazine and the Editor’s Choice Award from The Mas Tequila Review. She has performed on stages all over Southern California including the Segerstrom Center for the Arts. Danielle holds bachelor’s degrees in Women’s and Gender Studies and Creative Writing from the University of Redlands and is an alumna of the Community of Writers. She is currently working on a manuscript of poems about misogyny and the Internet.

You can find her on her website or follow her on Instagram, Tiktok, and LinkedIn.

You can also check out The Poetry Lab website or follow The Poetry Lab on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Goodreads.

The Poetry Lab

The Poetry Lab is a community learning space for creative writers. We are dedicated to mentoring and encouraging poets and writers to craft their learning journeys through non-traditional means. We are based in the Greater Los Angeles area, but most of our workshops and classes are now held online via Zoom. A creative journey itself, The Poetry Lab was co-founded by friends Markus D. Manley and Danielle Mitchell.

Originally housed inside Markus’ co-work space, Work Evolution Laboratories, in Downtown Long Beach, California, The Poetry Lab started as a bi-monthly generative workshop. We offered folx a chance to learn new skills, elements of craft, and techniques for submitting their work for publication. This collaborative community space offered writers something rare: a chance to learn in a relaxed setting, away from the stern trappings of Academia, and a space to gather in community outside of the open mic limelight. As our classes grew, we began inviting visiting teaching artists to lead workshops on topics like ekphrasis, image and metaphor, silence, new and invented forms. Eventually, our members also became Poetry Lab instructors. From the beginning, we have followed a collaborative model, celebrating diversity and the unique gifts that every writer brings to the table.

For Markus, it was always about nurturing the creative spirit. He dedicated his life’s work to arts and tech collaborations all over Long Beach. He was known in the community as the guy who would do whatever he could to help others thrive. It was this spirit that drove Danielle, a budding community organizer herself, to take the leap to bring this vision of The Poetry Lab to life.

Be sure to get The Poetry Lab’s newest guide on 5 Forms We’re Curious About this Year and other fun goodies.

Link to Episode 456

(Right-click to download.)

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Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 456: Therapy for Poets: On Reading and Writing Poetry – Interview with Danielle Mitchell appeared first on DIY MFA.

In a world where words can easily become blather, poetry offers a magnificent opportunity to return to the essence of our human experience. With poetry we are to feel the feels, to vividly bring forth what the mind has been whispering to us, to tend to the inner sanctuary.

Poetry also makes for great cross training when working on prose. If poetry has taken a backseat now that you’re working on longer forms, here are some simple ideas for getting in touch with your inner poet (other than, ahem, sitting down and actually penning a poem yourself): check out your state’s current poet laureate, elevate your dog’s life with a reading of Mary Oliver’s Dog Songs, or return to a classic and see if it speaks to you in a new way.

However you choose to experience National Poetry Month, come and word nerd out with us as we celebrate the awesomeness that occurs in April. 

Americans’s Favorite Poems 

In 1997, Robert Pinsky was recognized as the 39th U.S. Poet Laureate. That year, he made a contribution to the field of American poetry by creating The Favorite Poem Project, which was an open call asking anyone to write in, telling about their favorite poem and its importance.

The project received over 18,000 responses from people aged 5-97. As such, this treasure chest of Americans reading their favorite poems emerged from the endeavor. With so much astounding work held in the bosoms of so many, the best poems that didn’t get a camera crew were carried over into the anthology Americans’ Favorite Poems. 

I do feel the need to mention one aspect of this project, and that is how the poems are presented. The videos were made in the late ‘90s, and feel dated in a PBS-VHS-“I’m on the cutting edge of technology, reading here from my Palm Pilot” sort of way. Still, it is the words of Shakespeare, Emerson, Dickinson, Omar Khayyam, and many others that make this collection not only timeless, but a grouping so relevant to life, it shouldn’t be missed.   

***Has a poem really affected your life? If so, let everyone know on April 27, 2023 by posting with the Poem in Your Pocket Project, according to their guidelines. Should you miss my personal entry, I urge you to take a moment now and “rest in the grace of the world” with Wendell Berry’s The Peace of Wild Things. 

Art Inspired by Rumi

Garip Ay is a cutting edge Ebru artist. Ebru art is a Turkish form of water marbling, where oily paints and pigments are mixed on the surface of the water and then transferred onto paper. Ay pushes the boundary of the art form (and creates nothing less than visual magic) by conjuring fluid masterpieces, which may never actually make it onto a piece of paper.

Here he depicts several stories by the Sufi poet Rumi, which are as elegant and lyrical as many of us know Rumi to be. The stories referenced include: The Man Who Was Able to Talk to Birds, The Man Who Found His Way by Following a Dream, and The Man Who Was Saved by a Moonbeam. This seven and a half minute mesmerizing mental swim ends with a depiction of Rumi that would make Rumi’s own spirit dance.  

Calligrams and Their Creator

If you need a review or just want to learn a little more about one of poetry’s coolest forms, check out this video on the origin of calligrams, visual poems where the words are arranged into an image that is just as important as the text, as that image usually serves to complement the text. 

War veteran and Parisian bohemian Guillaume Apollinaire is credited as the creator of this analog mixed media literary form and, while he is a lesser celebrated poet, he is one worth looking into. Once you have a feel for the artistic scene calligrams grew out of, take the concept into the digital era by entering your own text into Caligram.art. 

Poets in the Wild

Given its short form, poetry is a great candidate to take out into the world and do on the fly. It allows for a literary approximation of busking combined with a little improv. There are at least two poets who are honing their linguistic skills (while also overcoming their fear of people), as they take their typewriters on the road and set up shop wherever they can, writing poems for donations and taking requests. See what this unique form of literary life is like, the awkward situations you may encounter and just how much cheese can mean for a person via poets Paul Wiegel and Afrose Fatima Ahmed.  

The PDR Poetry Collection

If you have yet to acquaint yourself with The Public Domain Review, please take a minute to do so this month through their poetry collection. The PDR itself is a journal that aggregates public domain holdings for anyone to use. However, their greater use is to provide materials that spark important conversations by giving us perspectives with which to question contemporary society. 

The materials featured on the PDR stand out because of the high quality standards they maintain. They host the “best of” materials relevant to our collective past. Moreover, this site, including the poetry section, is a feast for the eyes. They even have an uploaded version of the aforementioned Monsieur Apollinaire’s original Calligrammes.

Melissa Haas is the author and illustrator of Catula: The Misadventures of Dracula’s Cat and The Night Before Christmas (NOW WITH CATS), among others. Follow Catula’s whereabouts on Instagram @CatulaTheCat. If you’re interested in downloading free coloring pages or seeing Margaret Atwood with a blowtorch, check out more Leisure Learning related content at www.MelissaHaasCreates.com.

The post Leisure Learning, March 2023: Poetry Galore appeared first on DIY MFA.