“Poetic Justice” is back and building community

  Everyone’s favorite poetry podcast returns for Season 2, exploring the power and impact of poetry. In the first episode of Season 2, hosts and Center for Poetry interns, Allison Costello, Estee Schlenner, Lydia Barron, and Amy Potchen discuss the importance of poetry and community building with Cindy Hunter Morgan, the Center for Poetry’s interim

Poem of the Week: “All Souls’ Day”, by Carol Rumens

              All Souls’ Day By Carol Rumens   Let’s go our old way by the stream, and kick the leaves as we always did, to make the rhythm of breaking waves. This day draws no breath – shows no colour anywhere except for the leaves – in their death

“Fall”ing in love with poetry

“Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald Welcome back readers, writers, lovers of poetry and all those in between. The Center for Poetry is back with a fully loaded calendar this fall semester. Check out our “Calendar of Events” page for more information on dates, places

Poem of the Week: “The White Poet Wants to Know Why I Don’t Write More Arab Poems,” by Leila Chatti

The White Poet Wants to Know Why I Don’t Write More Arab Poems Because, while a war blooms at the margins of the other country that claims me, still   I am here with my ordinary grief and its language.   Because every time I open my mouth I am an Arab opening my mouth

Poem of the Week: “Languages” by Carl Sandburg

  There are no handles upon a language Whereby men take hold of it And mark it with signs for its remembrance. It is a river, this language, Once in a thousand years Breaking a new course Changing its way to the ocean. It is mountain effluvia Moving to valleys And from nation to nation

Poem of the Week: “Recreation” by Audre Lorde

  Coming together it is easier to work after our bodies meet paper and pen neither care nor profit whether we write or not but as your body moves under my hands charged and waiting we cut the leash you create me against your thighs hilly with images moving through our word countries my body

Poem of the Week: “White Petals,” by Tim Dlugos

The Republic lies in the blossoms of Washington.  —Robert Bly White petals drop into the dark river. Heedless of political significance, they ride out to the sea like stars.   I’m the space explorer. I travel to a planet where there are no plants or animals. Everyone lives in harmony. I don’t want to go home.

Poem of the Week: “Tunnel Music” by Mark Doty

Times Square, the shuttle’s quick chrome flies open and the whole car floods with– what is it? Infernal industry, the tunnels under Manhattan broken into hell at last? Guttural churr and whistle and grind of the engines that spin the poles? Enormous racket, ungodly. What it is is percussion: nine black guys with nine lovely,

Spring Poetry Festival Lineup Announced

The Center for Poetry has confirmed the spectacular lineup of poets for the 2017 Spring Poetry Festival. Funded in part by the MSU Office for Inclusion and Intercultural Initiatives, three poets known world wide will be visiting campus for afternoon conversations and evening performances during the month of April. Tina Chang, born in New York

Poem of the Week: Easter, 1916

100 years ago on April 24, an uprising took place against Great Britain’s rule of Ireland. Though the uprising was unsuccessful and many of the prominent Irish leaders involved were executed, the uprising exemplified national pride and revolution. Later that year, poet William Butler Yeats composed “Easter, 1916” describing his conflicted emotions towards the event.