Is it poetic or ironic that during National Poetry Month, poets must compete with the crocuses and the IRS for attention? And this year, add the turmoil of tariffs and the DOGEian debacle to the mix. Can we still find poetry while worrying about, well, insert the day’s headlines here. (At this particular writing, it’s a looming trade war with China, Harvard’s stand against the administration, illegal deportations, and the stomach-churning digestive cycle of market fluctuations.) In the past, at least, the poets have been able to break through the noise. According to poets.org, National Poetry Month is the largest literary celebration in the world. That’s right, in the world!
As Maya Angelou wrote: “You may write me down in history /With your bitter, twisted lies, /You may trod me in the very dirt /But still, like dust, I’ll rise.”
I suspect there are more poets living among us here than in many other communities. I asked Claudia Taylor, Vineyard poet laureate, why she thought there were so many poets living on an Island where, let’s just say, the cost of living is a wee bit higher than a poet’s salary. Claudia’s take was, “The Island’s natural beauty, its seasonal ebbs and flows, its long history as a haven for artists and musicians and writers, and its welcoming acceptance of ‘misfit toys’ (so to speak) all make it almost impossible not to be involved with some kind of creative activity here. It’s hard not to be inspired by all of that.”
If you check out our “Reading and Writing Around the Rock” column, you’ll find a few events celebrating the tail end of National Poetry Month on the Island. We also want to say congratulations to Adriana Stimola, who was recently named the poet laureate for West Tisbury. As for me, I had the honor this month, along with children’s book author Gregory Mone and poet and editor Ron Slate, of being a judge for the Chilmark School’s poetry contest.
And while on the topic of contests, I want to mention that the Vineyard Preservation Trust is hosting an “Island Inspiration Contest” for high school students. Submissions can be in the form of a painting, photograph, drawing, architecture, digital art, news article, essay, or short story.
In our inaugural Islanders Write newsletter, we included a writing prompt about first summer jobs. In this issue we have included links to three of the essays we received. They were written by Sally Walsh, Dorothy Pitt, and Lynn Ditchfield. We are also continuing with this prompt, only narrowing it down a bit, to focus on summer jobs on Martha’s Vineyard, because we want to collect more stories about the often life-transforming, and at the very least memorable, experiences people have had. For me, in the early 1980s, we hitchhiked to work and headed to a beach for a swim after our shift was done, no matter what time of day or night it was.
For those of you who weren’t here in the summer, or already wrote about your summer job, we have a second writing prompt, which is: Love and awe on the Vineyard. Essays must be 500 words or fewer, and the deadline is May 6. We will select one essay from each of these prompts to showcase in our next newsletter. The two writers of the chosen essays will receive an Islanders Write tote bag.
In this newsletter, we also have a new Vin-Lit quiz, a powerful essay by Chilmark Writing Workshop founder Nancy Slonim Aronie about the themes people write about most often in her workshops, a look at 28-year-old Sarah Shaw Dawson’s path to becoming a reporter, a video montage from the first midwinter Islanders Write, which was held in March, and writing tips and recommendations.
And please mark your calendars for our summer Islanders Write event, which will take place on the evening of Sunday, August 17, and all day on Monday, August 18, at Featherstone Center for the Arts.
If you are not interested in receiving this monthly newsletter, you can unsubscribe by clicking here, or at the bottom of the newsletter. And as always, please reach out to me if you have questions, writing news, or feedback kate@mvtimes.com.
Keep scribbling, Kate Feiffer, director
Islanders Write