Ada Limón born March 28, 1976, is an American poet of Mexican America heritage, a magazine contributor, and an educator. Her 2015 poetry collection, Bright Dead Things, was a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry, and in 2018, her book The Carrying, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. She is the current U.S. Poet Laureate.
She contributed her poem “Salvage” to Greenpeace’s #ClimateVisionaries Project.
To read her poem click:
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Today is Tolkien Reading Day, started by the Tolkien Society in 2003. It is held annually on March 25, the day of the downfall of Sauron.
In addition to writing The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and related books like The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien wrote a number of short stories, and quite a bit of poetry.
Billy Collins was born on March 22, 1941, dubbed “the most popular poet in America” by Bruce Weber in the New York Times, was a two-term U.S. Poet Laureate (2001-2003), and has published many poetry collections, including Questions About Angels; The Art of Drowning; and Nine Horses: Poems. It was Questions About Angels, published in 1991, that put him in the literary spotlight. Collins says his poetry is “suburban, it’s domestic, it’s middle class, and it’s sort of unashamedly that.”
To read his poem “Boyhood” click:
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“China’s leader Xi Jinping on Monday vowed to bolster national security and build the military into a “great wall of steel,” in the first speech of his precedent-breaking third term as president.
Speaking at the closing of the annual meeting of China’s rubber-stamp parliament, Xi underscored the need to comprehensively modernize national defense and the military.
‘We must build the People’s Liberation Army into a great wall of steel that effectively safeguards national sovereignty, security, and development interests,’ Xi told the nearly 3,000 delegates of the National People’s Congress.”
– CNN March 13, 2023
Naomi Shihab Nye was born in 1952 in St. Louis, Missouri, to a Palestinian father and an American mother; poet, songwriter, children’s author, novelist, and editor. In 1966, when she was 14, her family moved to the West Bank because her paternal grandmother was sick. In 1967, just before the Six-Day War broke out, they returned to the U.S., settling in San Antonio, Texas. She earned a BA in English and world religions from Trinity University in 1974. Nye teaches creative writing at Texas State University, and also runs writing workshops for children and teens. Nye was honored for her body of work with the 2013 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature, and in 2019, the Poetry Foundation chose her as the Young People’s Poet Laureate for the 2019-2021 term. In addition to editing anthologies of verse by contemporary poets, she has published over two dozen collections of her own poetry. Her debut young adult novel Habibi was named an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, and honored with a Jane Addams Children’s Book Award, given for children’s books which advance peace and social equality.
To read Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem “Jerusalem” click:
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“The world breaks every one and afterward many
are strong at the broken places. But those that will
not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very
gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none
of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there
will be no special hurry.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
by IRENE FOWLER, Contributor
Yesterday was International Women’s Day and this year’s theme is #EmbraceEquity.
“March is also Women’s History Month in Australia, the United States, and the United
Kingdom and is a time to celebrate and recognize the amazing contributions of women
throughout history…” – Google
Ilhan Omar is a Somali-American woman born in the capital city, Mogadishu, in the horn of Africa. A place she called home for her first eleven years. The quintessential African character-forming values, which she would have imbibed from infancy and which will follow her to her grave include; familial and communal cohesion, reverence for elders, open-hospitality, hard work and a zeal for self-improvement.
Central to Omar’s guiding philosophy would be reflections on Africa and images of the daily toil of its entrepreneurial and irrepressible populations. The unconquerable spirit which refuses to give up despite debilitating odds, would no doubt be a factor in propelling her to reach her personal and career goals.
Omar was raised in Baidoa, a city in a semi-arid region of Somalia, with a population of under 400,000. She would have been all too familiar with the myriad villages and hamlets, set on a sea of reddish-dark clay, surrounded by the untamed wilderness of Africa’s flora and fauna, and bathed in the yearlong splendour of the African sun. Places which are more often than not, deemed abject, as they are bereft of vestiges of urban sophistication or chic, and lack most modern amenities or conveniences.
To read the rest of Irene’s tribute to Ilhan Omar,
and her poem“Women: More not Less” click:
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Flowers For Socrates 