For the first two summers of our event Poetry and Pottery, we collected the poems that the writers were willing to share.  The authors are young and old, unhoused and housed, local and tourists. The poems give words to the experience of life, the street, and our afternoons of unbridled creativity.

If Love Was a Board Game

If love was a board game –

I was missing the pieces –

I had the box, the instructions,

the board itself, even the paper money.

But no game is a game

until you have a piece to play with

To hold in your hand, to make

The best decisions with,

To win the game with.

You are my piece. You are my character.

Are you ready to win the game?

By Megan Jean Robinson

When the pandemic interrupted in-person poetry workshops beginning in March 2020, Poetry Heals started offering online workshops. As the poems were created, it dawned on us that keeping a record of human expression during the 2020-21 COVID-19 pandemic was a good idea. By April 2020, we were keeping track of poems written together in our online workshops. This collection comes from online poetry groups from April 2020 through September 2021. The pandemic has been devastating. And yet we have silly poems and hopeful poems amid the painful and sad ones. These poems record how we are coping, what we have been thinking and doing, how we have used writing poems together to process our fears and concerns. We hope you enjoy this collection reflecting our mutual experience.

COVID FATIGUE          May 27, 2020

an acrostic

Casual conversation has gone by the wayside

Opposing moralities

Void of physical contact

Ingenuity explosion

Double thinking any errand

Fabulously creative

Adapt and thrive

Tired of the politicizing of everything!

Ignorance has raised its shaggy head

Grateful for my life slowing down

Unkempt is okay

Environmental recovery

Poetry Heals Open Workshop