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What Sparks Poetry is a series of original essays that explores experiences and ideas that spark the writing of new poems. In our new series of Ecopoetry Now, poets engage in an ecopoetic conversation across borders. Each Monday's delivery brings you the poem and an excerpt from the essay.
Down from such heights and up from depths beyond
measure the old ice
than the stones can hold
the one note of a
in ages since we've
holds us in its heavy
now at the pace of
down the valley it
have stopped it is
almost there singing
the last time either;		   slowly now quicker
it knows its path like
bird flown beyond us
forgotten the wind
sleeves so sorry
our elders' tongues
is going the clocks
happy to be finished
the song no one heard
when the rains began.
from the book WHALE FALL / W. W. Norton & Company
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Color image of the cover of David Baker's book, Whale Fall
What Sparks Poetry:
David Baker on "The Telling"

"I stood there at the glacier and felt deep below my feet the world moving and the ice dying. Glaciers melt from the bottom, and from within, as they creep along inexorably toward lower ground and, eventually, toward oceans and seas. How to write about such things? How can a small lyric poem begin to suggest the complexities of the subject and this place? I guess the answer is, how can we not try?"
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Color photograph of Robert Hayden's home in Ann Arbor, Michigan
Historic Status for Robert Hayden's Home

"After many months of consideration, Ann Arbor has decided to honor a late Black couple who broke racial barriers several decades ago. City Council voted 9-0 this week to grant historic status to the house at 1201 Gardner Ave. where poet Robert Hayden, the University of Michigan English department’s first Black faculty member, once lived with his wife Erma."

via MICHIGAN LIVE
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Apply to the Bread Loaf Translators' Conference
June 2 to 8, 2023

Join our award-winning faculty in the heart of Vermont’s Green Mountains for a week of introductory and advanced workshops along with an inspiring schedule of lectures, classes, and readings. Financial aid is available. Rolling admissions through February 15th. 
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