The title for this post comes from Kim Addonizio’s and Dorianne Laux’s book, The Poet’s Companion. In full, the sentence in the book reads:
The need to go back, to recover in language what’s lost, often impels poets to explore that landscape of memory and early experiences.
To recover in language what’s lost.
To explore that landscape of memory.
These are some of the reasons I write, but they are also reasons why I spend one Saturday a month with the writers at Harwood Place. Many of the pieces they compose come in the form of flash nonfiction and (more recently) poetry, and almost all of their pieces build on a memory.
For the last several weeks, I’ve been compiling the second edition of Writers at the Table, a very organic process as I sift through typewritten pieces and handwritten pieces and wait for the postman to deliver. The joy is in watching the pages come together in limericks and poems and essays. Stories about the simple joys in life, views from the window, and the heartache of living in one place while your lifelong partner receives care in another.
Exploring the landscape of memory through universal themes like love, loyalty, and loss.
If you’re anywhere near the area on Saturday, January 31st, we’re hosting a reading. Seven writers will share their work at the podium in front of Harwood Place residents, family, and friends. We’ll serve lemonade and coffee and cookies, laughter, tears, and hugs. 8220 West Harwood Avenue, Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. 2pm. I can’t wait.
If you’d like more information about the anthology, Writers at the Table II, contact me. If you think you might go to the reading, leave a comment here. I’ll look for you and introduce you to the people who can really liven up a Saturday morning.