Listen To Your Mother Milwaukee Venue: Wehr Hall, Alverno College (photo credit: Alexandra Rosas)
I’ll be wearing my mother’s jewelry on Sunday when I read my piece for Listen To Your Mother. Necklace, earrings, and a ring that reflects like a tiny disco ball (watch out), her jewelry is way outside my boundaries of glam; she always leaned towards the more fancy side of things. Still, it’s fitting.
Right now, we are in the thick of National Poetry Month. While I’m not much of a poet, I do love a good poem. And, I’ve come across some great reads in the last week that got me all fired up.
In Your Neighborhood.
Look around. There’s probably a poet near you doing an amazing project for National Poetry Month. Lisa Rivero has been on my radar; she writes how poetry “forces us to pay attention.”
Taking entries from her great-aunt Hattie’s diaries, she has been turning every-day details from life on the Great Plains in the 40’s and 50’s into beautiful poems and pairing them with images of the actual pages. I absolutely love this project.
Read two of my favorites:
April 8, 1945: We Had a Lot Of, in the vein of William Carlos Williams’ This Is Just To Say. Lisa calls this one “Found Poetry.” I call it perfect.
If you subscribe to The Writer’s Almanac, you can experience National Poetry Month every single day. I’d been on their list for a while then somehow stopped getting emails. I’m glad I signed up again, because this poem from April 13th did exactly what Lisa talks about: made me slow down and focus on the details.
Evening and the flat land,
Rich and sombre and always silent;
The miles of fresh-plowed soil,
Heavy and black, full of strength and harshness;
The growing wheat, the growing weeds,
The toiling horses, the tired men;
. . . .
Last Sunday afternoon, I drove the short distance from my home to the second rehearsal for the Listen to Your Mother Milwaukee Show. And then, I sat in the car for a good five minutes.
I re-read my essay out loud. Watched folks coming and going through the parking garage. Hoped everyone thought I was talking into my blue tooth on some very important phone call instead of mumbling to myself.
I took a deep breath.
I said a prayer.
I opened the car door and went inside.
I am nervous. I’ve read my work in front of friends and family before. Even this particular story isn’t entirely new. Still, there’s something different in the idea of taking the stage. Under the lights. In front of a microphone. But sitting around the table with the other women (who are likely as nervous as me), I heard exactly what I needed.
Alexandra Rosas, one of the co-producers of the show, opened the rehearsal with a pep talk of why Listen to Your Mother is so important. This show is about regular people–your friend, your neighbor, that woman at the grocery store whom you’ve never met in person but you see every Saturday afternoon–sharing stories about what it takes to be a mother, love a mother, honor a mother. And, as Alexandra so aptly said, it’s about people learning how much more they are capable of.
It’s about courage.
Courage to recognize your story.
To write it down.
To share it with someone new in a way that may be entirely unfamiliar but connects us just the same.
On April 27th at 3pm, we take the stage. You should come. If not to the show in Milwaukee then to the show in your area. It’s almost guaranteed you’ll hear something that strikes a chord, and you might even be inspired to write a story of your own.
10% of the proceeds go to IMPACT, an organization offering services that “restore the health and productivity of individuals, organizations and workplaces leading to an improved quality of life for our entire community.”
