Irene Latham's Blog, page 88

Poem for a Better World

Hello and Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure to visit Brenda at Friendly Fairy Tales for Roundup.

I'm in Atlanta for NCTE, which happens to be one of my most favorite conferences of the year. I love being around so many people who are passionate about books and education and children. I always come away so very inspired -- more about this next week!

So today, I have a new original poem to share with you. It's inspired in part by world events and the Writing for a Better World panel I'll be on tomorrow, and also by my seamstress-mother, who can create beauty out of even the most tattered piece of fabric.


Alterations
And this is how
we shall remake
the world:
like a seamstress
with pins in her mouth,
steady fingers
coaxing thread,
a hum forever
in her throat
as stitch by stitch
the fabric is fitted,
             gathered –
until what was once
tattered, now dances across the floor.

- Irene Latham

Letters to the Dead

A couple of weeks ago I issued the last 2016 edition of my occasional author email newsletter. If you missed it, you can view it here and subscribe here.

In the letter I offered a giveaway for my new chapbook DEAR SLAVE, which contains poems that are letters to former slaves. I wrote the letters after I read their words in slave narratives collected by Ruby Pickens Tartt.

To enter the giveaway, I asked people to reply with the name of a deceased loved one they'd like to write a letter to, and (optional) what they would say in the letter.

Response continues to be overwhelming! I've gotten so many messages from folks sharing their loved ones  -- parents and sisters and children and friends -- and I'm so very honored to read the things they would like to say to them.

A couple of things stand out to me about the experience. First, we NEED to say the names of the ones we love who are no longer with us. Saying their names, sharing them with others, is important. Second, we are all the same. Grief unites us. All the feelings and regrets and love -- no matter how different we are, or what the relationship, or what the circumstances of the death -- we share those emotions.

Below please find images of a few of the former slaves to whom I addressed poems in DEAR SLAVE. I wish I could have talked with them in real life. May we never forget their names.

Ank Bishop
Emma Crockett
Amy ChapmanAll photos courtesy of the Library of Congress.

"Rhapsody" for November

Hello and Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure to visit Jama's Alphabet Soup for Roundup, where she is offering up HOPE, which is pretty essential, isn't it? Thank you,  Jama. What an emotional week this has been... and I've had the stomach flu. Feeling MUCH better now, thank you very much! Nothing like a few sick days to make one extra grateful for those good-health days. Wow.

So I have a lovely little poem for you, and some sheep. Yep. Read on!

Rhapsody

I am glad daylong for the gift of song,
For time and change and sorrow;
For the sunset wings and the world-end things
Which hang on the edge of tomorrow.
I am glad for my heart whose gates apart
Are the entrance-place of wonders,
Where dreams come in from the rush and din
Like sheep from the rains and thunders.

-William Stanley Braithwaite

Speaking of sheep, have you read THE SHEPHERD'S LIFE: Modern Dispatches from an Ancient Landscape by James Rebanks? I loved learning about these sheep families and the whole world of Beatrix Potter. (And now I totally want to watch again MISS POTTER.) It's a hard life, methinks, with so much out of one's control. But it's also obviously rewarding. I particularly enjoyed the lessons of such a life:

"We don't give up, even when things go bad.We pay our debts.We work hard.We act decently.We help our neighbors if they need it.We do what we say we will do.We don't want much attention.We look after our own.We are proud of what we do.We try to be quietly smart.We take chances sometimes to get on.We will fail sometimes.We will be affected by the wider world...But we hold on to who we are."
Here's to holding on to who we are in the midst of wider world events! 
And finally, here again is my NCTE schedule -- even though there's glaring typo AND we've added Laura Purdie Salas to the Nonfiction Roundtable! Even better, right?? I know I will be seeing a number of you... very excited!

Don't Miss Atlanta's Center for Civil and Human Rights While at #NCTE16

Last year I was able to visit The Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta, and it was powerful and unforgettable. I was there with dear poet-friends, and as we entered the building we asked one of the employees which part was his favorite, of all the displays, which did he most recommend. Right away, he said, "the lunch counter."

I nodded, thinking literally "lunch." I am always down for a sandwich or a nice salad. But that's not what he was talking about. He was talking about the interactive lunch counter exhibit where visitors sit at a model lunch counter, put on headphones, and "be" the people who were brave enough to do the sit-ins. To be taunted and shouted at and hit.

An exercise in empathy. And it left me in shambles. I was shaking when I came away from that counter. Shaking and crying and feeling so grateful for all the folks who have risked their lives for equality.

Seriously. Make time to go to this museum. Take a seat at the lunch counter. Let it change your life.

And, ponder this: What is your ethical footprint?

from an exhibit and The Center for Civil
and Human Rights in Atlanta, GA

Inside a Literary Agency

I've just finished reading MY SALINGER YEAR by Joanna Rakoff, as part of Bas Bleu's Book Club. It's about the author's stint typing letters and such during the late '90s working for the literary agency that represented J.D. (Jerry) Salinger.

As an author who's repped by a stellar literary agency, I found a couple of passages that really resonated:



Reading manuscripts was the exact opposite of reading for grad school: it was pure instinct, with some emotion and intelligence thrown in. Does this novel work? Or can it be made to work? Does it move me? Does it grip me?
-----------------
“First rejection,” he explained with a huge grin. “And it's a really great one.” I had worked at the Agency long enough to understand that there were rejections and there were rejections. There was not for me and I just didn't find these characters sympathetic and the story struck me as improbable at best, and also simply I'm afraid this is too similar to a novel we're publishing next fall or too similar to a writer already on our list. And then there was I truly loved the writing but I just didn't feel the story hung together and I'm so torn about this novel and I'd love to see this writer's next novel, which was essentially the gist of the note James held in his hand.-----------That last one is a heartbreaker. It can make a writer wonder if they know anything at all about storytelling. I've gotten it a few times... one way to get through it is to do exactly what's suggested: WRITE THE NEXT NOVEL.
There's also a little bit about a (rejected) manuscript by Judy Blume in the book! Interesting....
 So, if you're in this book industry, give it a go! I think you'll like it. 
Up next in the Book Club: The Journal of Helene Berr!

Poem for Election Day

Hello and Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure to visit Laura at Writing the World for Kids for Roundup.
I don't enjoy politics, but I do appreciate the fact that I live in a country where my voice counts for something. 
Freedom matters to me. A lot.
Here's a poem I wrote about it that was published in Scholastic's Storyworks magazine back in 2012.  Happy voting!

Election Day
Sift through promises,replay interviews;
step inside the booth.Forget scripted speeches
and candy-wrapped slogans.Weigh again each pro
and con. Rememberthe teeming world,
its people who dreamof freedom --
so many deniedthe right to decide.
Read the names,imagine a future;
make the best choice.In the space between breaths
your voice is heardwithout a word.
- Irene Latham-----------
...and for something entirely different, I posted yesterday at Smack Dab in the Middle about using a personal mission statement to navigate when to say Yes and when to say NO. I fear the only personal mission statement our current presidential candidates ascribe to is "win the election." Sigh.

But. It will be okay, no matter what. This I believe. xo

Hot, FRESH & Tasty at Louisiana Book Festival

The wall of book covers at the State Library!This was my second time to participate in Louisiana Book Festival -- the first time was in 2012 just after DON'T FEED THE BOY was released. It was a busier festival this time, with more folks roaming about, more tents, more books, more authors... and this time it was HOT. Being under those tents was a little like being microwaved. At the signing, Tessa Gratton and I peeled back the velcro on the tent to let a little air in, and boy did that help!

The book signing line.Before my book talk, I picnic-ed with writer-friends Pat Weaver, Sheila Renfro and Margaret Simon, who totally needs to write a book about how she fosters a passion for writing in her students!

 We sat under a giant magnolia tree, and the ground was so damp we had to sit on our books or bags -- and we still ended up a little muddy! But it was okay, because what is better than lunching with writer-friends?! The food was decent, too: catfish and red beans and rice. Gotta love Louisiana!

I presented FRESH DELICIOUS to a small but enthusiastic crowd, and the best part was afterward, when Margaret spied her student Madison, who, earlier that day, had received an award for a poem she wrote called "Reef for All" after my poem "Tree for All" in DEAR WANDERING WILDEBEEST. Isn't that cool? Here I am with Madison.


Two authors I was glad to see again were Rita Williams-Garcia and William Joyce. I should have taken pictures, but my arms were full! Later that evening we celebrated Sheila's birthday at a lovely French restaurant back in New Orleans called Cafe Degas... and then we came back to our rental house to read more books!  The Birthday Girl!
Books! Books! Books!

On Memorials & Why They're Important

A few days ago I visited the The National WWII Museum in New Orleans. While there I searched for and found a memorial brick my father purchased for his father -- my Granddaddy Dykes.
MSG Newton E Dykes, 819th Tank DST BTN "We Love You Dad"
Each section is marked to help you find "your" brick.


What surprised me how emotional the experience was for me. I cried when I saw it -- especially those words "We love you Dad." WE. Even though  my father was an only child, and he's the one who purchased the brick. We. My father knew the memorial wasn't just for one person, it was for all of us, for everyone, even those who never knew my grandfather. I don't know, it just touched me something fierce.

And it's got me thinking about how important it is to remember the people we love who have died. How these memorials, however permanent or semi-permanent, connect us to one another as a community, as a species. For two blocks along Magazine Street in front of the museum there are hundreds and hundreds of bricks, just like my grandfather's, but with different names. Other people come and find "their" bricks just like I did. We all share the same grief, the same love.

Which makes me especially grateful when I think about my father's bench in front of Bismarck Cancer Center in Bismarck, North Dakota. It was installed shortly after his death this past June. I haven't seen it yet in person, but I will. I will go sit on it, and I will remember. And yes, I will probably cry. And then I will be connected to everyone who has or ever will sit on that bench bearing my father's name.


"Run when you can, walk if you have to, crawl if you must; just never give up."
In Honor of Ken Dykes
Bismarck Cancer Center Executive Director
2007-2016
Beautiful, isn't it?

Another thing that surprised me: how much I loved "in honor of" instead of "in memory of." Honor. Now that is a lovely lovely thing. My father would have loved it. I'm so grateful to Bismarck Cancer Center, especially new executive director Amy Gross, for making it happen!

More on my trip, including the Louisiana Book Festival later this week. And: are you a subscriber to my email newsletter? New edition coming later this week that will include a giveaway just for subscribers... sign up here.

Rain Poems for the Drought in Alabama

Hello and Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure to visit sweet Linda at TeacherDance for Roundup. I'm excited because tomorrow I will be at Louisiana Book Festival presenting a book talk on FRESH DELICIOUS. Yay!

Here in Alabama we're in a stage 3 drought... so, in an effort to coax some rain this way I've been reading rain poems! Lucky me, I was gifted a sweet little book of such poems (thank you, Ramona!) called ONE BIG RAIN: Poems for Rainy Days compiled by Rita Gray, illustrated by Ryan O'Rourke .

Hope you enjoy the poems. Thank you for reading! And don't forget to enter the giveaway for GO SOUTH TO FREEDOM by Frye Gaillard! Deadline midnight Oct. 31!

November Rain
- Maud E. Uschold

This autumn rainfall
Is no shower
that freshens grass
And brings the flower.

This rain is long
And cold and gray,
Yet sleeping roots
Are fed this way.

Trees and bushes,
Nearly bare
Of leaves, now chains
Of raindrops wear

Along each twig.
Some clear beads fall.
A tree could never
Hold them all.

Rain
(Translated from the Norwegian by Sarah J. Hails)
- Sigbjorn Obstfelder

One is one, and two is two -
we sing in huddles,
we hop in puddles.
Plip, plop,
we drip on roof top,
trip, trop,
the rain will not stop.
Rain, rain, rain, rain,
bucketing rain,
chucketing rain,
rain, rain, rain, rain,
wonderfully raw,
wet to the core!
One is one, and two is two-
we sing in huddles,
we hop in puddles.
plip, plop,
we drip on roof top,
trip, trop,
the rain will not stop.

Go South to Freedom by Frye Gaillard #Giveaway

Today I'd like to share with you a book I was asked to blurb: Go South to Freedom by Fry Gaillard, illus. by Anne Kent Rush. It was released in September by NewSouth Books, an Alabama publisher I'm thrilled to be working with for the paperback edition of Leaving Gee's Bend, coming spring 2017. (!) Leaving Gee's Bend was first released by Putnam/Penguin in 2010, so the paperback has been a long time coming! I'm excited.

Meanwhile, Go South to Freedom earned a starred review from Kirkus! And here's my blurb:

"Go South to Freedom is a campfire story for all ages, filled with surprise and adventure, truth and sadness, and ultimately hope. Readers experience the great pull of freedom in this account of the courageous efforts of the African and other enslaved people to make their lives better. Inspiring and entertaining."

Things I like about this book:

1. It's based on a true story.
2. Readers learn something about runaway slave communities that existed in Florida as well as the community of free blacks in Mobile, Alabama.
3. The narrative in written in the tradition of oral storytelling.
4. The story is full of adventure and danger.
5. It reaffirms the human spirit and illuminates the strength and determination of enslaved people to be free.

I hope you will check it out! Thanks to NewSouth, I am able to offer a copy for giveaway! To enter, simply leave a comment below between now and 11:59 pm October 31. Then Maggie the (magical, disappearing) cat will select a winner -- and I will contact that person to get an address. Good luck!