April is National Poetry Month and we'll continue the tradition, started by Constance Alexander, of sharing poems from our region on the air each weekday.
We're inviting anyone age 13 on up to write poems in sixty words or less, to be broadcast as Poetry Minutes. We'll take poems in any style, as long as they celebrate what "Home" means to you.
This year's theme of "Home" takes inspiration from Kentucky author George Ella Lyon's classic, "Where I'm From." Your poem doesn't have to be in her style, but should have some connection the people or places who've helped shape your community or your life.
Where I'm From
By: George Ella Lyon
I am from clothespins,
from Clorox and carbon tetrachloride.
I am from the dirt under the back porch.
(Black, glistening
it tasted like beets.)
I am from the forsythia bush,
the Dutch elm
whose long gone limbs I remember
as if they were my own.
I’m from fudge and eyeglasses,
from Imogene and Alafair.
I’m from the know-it-alls and the pass-it-ons,
from perk up and pipe down.
I’m from He restoreth my soul with a cottonball lamb
and ten verses I can say myself.
I’m from Artemus and Billie’s Branch,
fried corn and strong coffee.
From the finger my grandfather lost to the auger
the eye my father shut to keep his sight.
Under my bed was a dress box
spilling old pictures,
a sift of lost faces
to drift beneath my dreams.
I am from those moments–
snapped before I budded–
leaf-fall from the family tree
