Irene Latham's Blog, page 29
August 21, 2020
ArtSpeak! RED poem "Milkmaid's Lament"
Hello and Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure to visit Ramona at Pleasures from the Page for Roundup.
Speaking of Ramona... this week she sent me a link to a live presentation (coming Aug. 23 - here is the link) of cellist Wendy Sutter playing Bach's Six Solo Cello Suites. So sweet, and so lovely! (Thank you, Ramona!)
And... in a serendipitous twist, I had just been practicing the Prelude to Bach's Cello Suite 1 when I received Ramona's text. :) And that re
Me-n-Lady Godiva
minded me that I haven't updated my cello progress here in a while. It's been FIVE YEARS since I started taking lessons! And yes, currently I am working on Bach's Suite 1 as well as Suzuki Book 7. It's an absolute dream to be able to play these pieces... my life continues to be enriched by my cello practice, and I expect to be taking lessons for another five years... and then... who knows??
My poem this week features another woman performing a mundane task (like Vermeer's Lacemaker from a few weeks ago)... and imagines her feelings about this task. I ended up playing with repetition in the poem, too, because these daily tasks ARE repetitive. Thank you for reading!
Milkmaid's Lament
Someone must mind the milk –
I do not mind that it's me.
I've warmed to the task
of sorting froth-curd-cream
from milk warmed
by blood and breathing.
Morning's breathing
sounds like a sleepy baby's sigh
as milk spills from the russet jug.
I want to hug this gentle moment,
but it spills into the next
and the next and the next
without any mind of me at all.
- Irene Latham
August 14, 2020
Grasping the Mysteries of Poetry, Math, and Science with Jeannine Atkins
Hello and Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure to visit Molly at Nix the Comfort Zone for Roundup. I am super excited because today one of my favorite favorites Jeannine Atkins is here to talk about her latest verse novel Grasping Mysteries: Girls Who Loved Math (Atheneum, 2020), which is earning beautiful reviews and offers a lovely follow-up to Finding Wonders: Three Girls Who Changed Science.
Publisher's description:
After a childhood spent looking up at the stars, Caroline Herschel was the first woman to discover a comet and to earn a salary for scientific research. Florence Nightingale was a trailblazing nurse whose work reformed hospitals and one of the founders of the field of medical statistics. The first female electrical engineer, Hertha Marks Ayrton registered twenty-six patents for her inventions.
Marie Tharp helped create the first map of the entire ocean floor, which helped scientists understand our subaquatic world and suggested how the continents shifted. A mathematical prodigy, Katherine Johnson calculated trajectories and launch windows for many NASA projects including the Apollo 11 mission. Edna Lee Paisano, a citizen of the Nez Perce Nation, was the first Native American to work full time for the Census Bureau, overseeing a large increase in American Indian and Alaskan Native representation. And Vera Rubin studied more than two hundred galaxies and found the first strong evidence for dark matter.
Told in vibrant, evocative poems, this stunning novel celebrates seven remarkable women who used math as their key to explore the mysteries of the universe and grew up to do innovative work that changed the world.
JA: Thank you for the three questions, Irene. My favorite number, because of the bears, blind mice, musketeers, and the triangles of beginnings, middles, and ends.The delicious
JA: Looking back from when a book is ready to go into the world, it all seems delicious. But I’ll get to the more truthful part with your next question. For me, the small things within big stories are what make my mouth water. I can read through many generalizations without wanting to sit up straight, but when I run across something like doctors calling Florence Nightingale the Lady with a Hammer, or the names of Marie Tharp’s poodles or the linoleum flooring shop where Vera Rubin got a free cardboard tube to construct a telescope with her father, I feel as if I’ve been invited into a life. I need to get back to the math behind discoveries, but often the small things help me shape a poem.
The difficult
[image error]JA: I generally love research, a fancy name for reading and daydreaming with a focus on how to arrange facts. But to be honest, researching math was not the most fun I’ve ever had. I wrote Finding Wonders: Girls Who Changed Science not because of my science skills, but I love the natural world, which gave me a way to connect with an astronomer, a biologist, and a paleontologist. Researching that book meant learning more about women in STEM, and I became aware of how important math skills are to success in most present-day science. I wanted to cheer on girls who already love math and show young readers who don’t that there’s more to the subject than they realize. So I pushed myself to learn. When it was hard, I kept going to honor the women from history I came to know and love.
The unexpected
Kirby! (Jeannine'sresearch buddy)JA: Sometimes my husband passes my stacks of science books and says, “This isn’t what I expected when I met you in 1983.” Me neither. Back then I read Virginia Woolf and was not much of a math or science student. I’m far from an expert now. But I know what questions to ask. Caring about the natural world, today’s girls and boys, and the history of women has brought me to some beautiful places.
Thank you, Jeannine!
And I shall leave you with a favorite quote from each section of the book:
Caroline Herschel -- "Night isn't a veil, but a door."
Hertha Marks Ayrton -- "Sarah loves math for its loyalty. / Numbers may disappear, but new ones take their place." [Before she was called Hertha, her parents named her Sarah.]
Marie Tharpe -- "Every map is a compromise."
Katherine Johnson --"She loves best what she can't count: / raindrops, leaves rustling into a chorus, / stars blinking in and out of sight over the hills."
Edna Lee Paisano -- "The river remembers her shape."
From Vera Rubin -- "Doubt paves the path to discovery."
... and a writing prompt! Each section features a poem called "A Girl's Education." Write your own poem with that title.
This week's ArtSpeak: RED poem "Saturday Morning" after Vermeer's "The Little Street" can be found here. Thank you for reading!
August 13, 2020
ArtSpeak! RED poem "Saturday Morning" after Vermeer's "The Little Street"
Hello, and welcome to my latest ArtSpeak! RED poem! This is the third poem in a row inspired by a Vermeer painting. Here are the other two:
"Beware" after "The Girl in a Red Hat""Lacemaker, Late Afternoon" after "The Lacemaker"
I'm posting a day early, because tomorrow Jeannine Atkins will be visiting to share about her newest book, and I want to save all the space for her. Enjoy!
Saturday Morning
When we stroll along the cobbled street,
we savor the sweet flavor of morning.
The red bricks swallow the sun's heat
as we stroll along the cobbled street.
We never know who we might meet –
or what sweet memories we're forming –
when we stroll along the cobbled street.
Oh, what a delicious morning!
- Irene Latham
August 7, 2020
ArtSpeak: RED poem "Beware"
Around these parts, it's the last week before school starts. The air is mostly brutally humid, with a few breezy days thrown in to remind us that change is coming...
I've been reading A LOT -- mostly middle grade novels, as part of my NCTE Charlotte Huck Award committee duties. This week I particularly loved THE LIST OF THINGS THAT WILL NOT CHANGE by Rebecca Stead. Here's a quote that reminded me of the "(Epitaph for) Hate" spread in DICTIONARY FOR A BETTER WORLD.
Miriam say that, a lot of the time, behind the feeling “I hate this” are other feelings. Like maybe “I'm afraid of this” is hiding behind “I hate this.” And maybe hiding behind “I'm afraid of this” is “I don't know what's going to happen next” or “I don't know if I can do this.” There are lots of feelings behind feelings. - Rebecca Stead
... and I guess that might have been sort of what was on my mind when I approached this week's ArtSpeak: RED poem, which emerged with themes of hiding and disguise. Thank you so much for reading!
Beware
If you find my eyes
beneath a feathery red brim
I hope you realize
I am not simply a girl;
I am a bird in a girl's disguise.
If you try to hide me
in the cup of your hands,
I'll flap, flash, lift –
FLY!
- Irene Latham
July 31, 2020
On Art and Lace and Poetry
Before I get to today's ArtSpeak: RED poem,
Happy birthday also to my niece JuliAnna, who is a huge HP fan.
Also, I want to share this handout I created (also available as a pdf download on my website):
Finally, I'd like to address a question brought forth by Linda in comments to last week's blog post:
How do you select art for this project?
The truth is, I don't have any hard and fast method. Before I expanded this project to year-round (instead of for National Poetry Month only), I would sit down sometime before April 1 and search the internet. I'd populate a file on my computer with 31 images (allowing 1 to be a throwaway, if for some reason I couldn't find a poem in it). Some years I've written on them in the order they appear in my file. Other years I picked whichever image spoke to me that day. Still other years I've been more organized and had themes per week within my broader theme.
But now, with the expansion of this project, I really try to let my muse (and whimsy!) guide me. Sometimes I'll sit down and search for red art. Sometimes I find art on other people's websites (most recently I wrote a poem after a strawberry piece I saw on Jama's blog), and sometimes I want to explore a particular artist's work, and so I will search their works to see what might fit my theme.
One source I've found helpful this year, because I've got a color theme, is Google Arts and Culture. They have a "search art by color" feature. Most of the art I select is in the public domain (wikiart is a good source; also the National Gallery of Art online collection), but not all of it. I am careful to attribute the work and have been advised that because I am transforming the work by adding a poem, this falls into "fair use" territory.
I hope this information helps any of you who may want to write your own ekphrastic poems! And I will tell you: I have enjoyed the "red" theme so much, I am already looking ahead to 2021 (for many MANY reasons!), and I think I may write BLUE poems next year. We'll see!
And now... today's poem! I wrote several pages on this painting, trying all sorts of approaches. This is where I landed:
Lacemaker, Late Afternoon
Even as the light diesand the needle bites,
she greets each taskwith tenderness.
And when the threadstangle into a nest of knots,
her fingers remaindevoted –
for lace is made of dreams.
- Irene Latham
Wishing you dreams and lace and a lovely day! Thank you for reading.
July 24, 2020
ArtSpeak: RED poem "Love in the Time of Long Distance"
When I first looked at this Mark Rothko piece I thought it looked like a face with a white mouth. Then I thought it looked like a mailbox. So, both those things found their way into today's poem.
Love in the Time of Long Distance
sometimes the mouth opensand silence spills out
sometimes the mouthis a slotand silent wordsriding plain envelopesslip in
sometimes the eyessay what the mouth can't
sometimes wordsmake everything worse
sometimes the mouth opensand after the noisewhat's leftis hope
- Irene Latham
July 17, 2020
ArtSpeak: RED poem "Priorities"
Hello and Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure to "float" on over to visit Jan at bookseedstudio for Roundup. (Sorry I didn't do anything float-y!)I'm delighted to be back at my desk today, and I am eager to read all of your offerings! Before I get to my contribution, I've got a couple of newsy bits to share:
1. THIS POEM IS A NEST got its first review, and it's a ★ from Kirkus. Yay!
2. I recently picked up in a thrift store QUILTING: Poems 1987-1990 by Lucille Clifton. Here's one that speaks to me:
photograph
my grandsons
spinning in their joy
universe
keep them turning turning
black blurs against the window
of the world
for they are beautiful
and there is trouble coming
round and round and round
- Lucille Clifton
3. On our pilgrimage to North Dakota in memory of my father, a dear friend (who loved and worked with my father) said she didn't want to be like him in the end, because he "died in the chair." Meaning, he worked until the day of his death. And it's true: nothing was more important or gratifying to my father than his work. And while that is admirable, it's also... sad. I'm grateful for every moment he gave me over the years, and I should say he gave me maybe more than he gave anyone else (besides his work). Paul and I talked about it a lot on our (24 hour) drive home, and it inspired this week's poem.
Priorities
If I say redand you say morningare we talking aboutskyor strawberries?
If I say redand you say foreverdoes it indicate loveor intolerance?
If I say redand you say yeslet's think laterand dance right now!
- Irene Latham
July 10, 2020
ArtSpeak: RED "There Can Be No Sorrow"
There Can Be No Sorrow
when strawberries sit
summering
on a blue
plate
- Irene Latham
July 3, 2020
ArtSpeak: RED "Cave Painting (Altamira)" poem
So many thanks to all who have sent in poems for mine and Charles' new poetry anthology -- we've received some wonderful poems! If you're just seeing this, there's still time. Click here for all the details.
Today I've got another ArtSpeak: RED poem for you... from one of the oldest known pieces of art ever.
...and here is my poem! Thanks so much for reading.
Cave Painting (Altamira)
A single bison risesfrom cool-damp walls,
its fire-stroked hidespirited as its eyes.
What hands graspedpestle to grind the ochre?
What mind imaginedthis bison's bold stance?
Who was first to smear-brush-daubthis bison to life?
Who was first to call it red?
- Irene Latham
June 25, 2020
OPEN CALL for a new Children's Poetry Anthology
Some of you may have received the notice below via email. In an effort to give everyone a chance to be part of this, Charles and I are posting it on our blogs and social media outlets as well. Charles and I hope you'll send us a poem -- and please, spread the word! Our book can only be as strong and beautiful as the poems we receive.
Hello from Irene Latham and Charles Waters. We’re also known as the I and C Construction Co., where we've been building books one word at a time since 2015! We have just secured a book deal with Candlewick Press for an as-yet untitled collection of poems for children.
Here’s the official description:
In this children's poetry anthology, a diverse group of poets use the word "IF" as the first word in the first line of each poem inviting readers to take their own leaps into different worlds -- from the Practical to the Fantastical -- inspiring and empowering them to hope and dream; to transform their lives and the world; and know that anything is possible. It all starts with IF.
Our goal is to focus on imagination, to introduce readers to the galaxies that lie in wait behind those doors of “I” and “F” – what unseen treasures have you found there? What “if” have you wondered/dreamed/schemed about? Imagine practical things like, “If You Catch a Firefly” by Lilian Moore. Imagine a new you (personal growth). Imagine a different world (people, community, relationships). Imagine anything is possible (fantastical). Such a small, powerful word... what's YOUR “if”? Do YOU have an “if” poem? Would you like to write one?Here are some basic guidelines:
Please send one poem only.
First word of the first line must be the word “If.” Not "WHAT if." Just IF. (Having “If” in the title is optional.)
Please no “If I Were A” poems. (We have plenty of these already!)
Poem no longer than 28 lines (shorter poems preferred).
Our target audience is ages 4-8.
Send your poem in the body of an email to lathamandwaters@gmail.com by 11:59 pm Friday, July 3, 2020. Please also include: your name (or pen name), along with contact info, and a short (1-2 sentence) third-person bio.
If your poem is selected for inclusion, we will be in touch with you later this year. You will be compensated $100 for first-time only (non-exclusive) publication rights of the poem. This anthology is sure to inspire kids by infusing them with the spirit of imagination and endless possibility. We look forward to reading your work!
Wishing you strength and joy.
Our best,
Irene and Charles
