Pete the Cat!

Hello and Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure to visit marvelous Margaret at Reflections on the Teche for Roundup.
Oh my goodness, I had the best time with my mother and sister exploring northeast Alabama! One of the highlights was visiting Ft. Payne, home of Pete the Cat. (Ft. Payne is the original home of illustrator James Dean.) We visited all the Pete the Cat murals and his sidewalk star and took selfies and visited the shops...so much fun!



In other news, Charles and I will be at Highlights this summer! (June 23-26 -- perfect for educator-poets!) You asked, and we listened... this time we are offering a "Working Retreat," which means less instruction and more time to WRITE! We expect this to be super-community-building, and we'd love for you to join us! *Our focus will be on poetry collections, both solo and anthologies...which is a great fit because our first anthology comes out fall 2024, our second anthology comes out spring 2025, and we hope to have an announcement for you very soon about a new one.
Today's ArtSpeak: FOLK ART poem is after a piece by Maine artist Earl Cunningham. So many thanks to Jan Annino for telling me about this artist! (Several others also offered artist suggestions in response to my latest Adventures in Writing newsletter...thank you, thank you! I'll be getting to them all eventually.)
I wrote a bunch of fragments that went in a bunch of different directions...kind of like the clouds in the art! And that thought is exactly how I landed on the poem I'm sharing below. 
Sometimes one doesn't know where one is going—in sailing or in writing—until you just... GO.


first sail of seasonare those clouds sheep or wolvestoo soon to tell
- Irene Latham
On the reading front, I've been catching up with ALA YMA winners that I hadn't yet read. One I want to mention and highly recommend: The Fire, The Water, and Maudie McGinn by Sally J. Pla, which won the Schneider Family Book Award (for MG). So much good stuff going on in this book! Prose, poetry, learning, adventure, healing, empowerment...I loved it. And I cried. Twice. xo