Poetry Friday: Passing the Laurel Wreath

Head over to Donna's blog, Mainely Write, 

for this week's round-up of poetic goodness. 
She's sharing beautiful poetry postcards. 

Thanks, Donna, for hosting this week!

I'm sad to realize that it's been awhile since I participated in Poetry Friday. Yesterday while I was out running errands, I heard a teaser about an upcoming interview on our public radio station, KUOW. I listened carefully and dashed into the house to find the radio station on my computer. I didn't want to miss this interview with Tod Marshall, our outgoing state poet laureate and our incoming poet laureate, Claudia Castro Luna.  Claudia was Seattle's first civic poet. When I saw her on NPR's NewsHour last fall sharing her project to connect poetry and place, I was inspired to write a Poetry Friday post with a link to her interview.

Our outgoing poet laureate, Tod Marshall visited IMS in the spring of 2016.  I saw him briefly at Poetry Camp in the fall of 2016 which resulted in getting my copy of Words with Wings autographed by Nikki Grimes. I participated in a poetry reading at Island Books in September of 2017 with Tod and other local poets. 

I love listening to Tod speak about the power of words and so I settled in for this radio interview with him and Claudia at my upstairs desk. I didn't have my writer's notebook and no time to find it, so I had to make do with notes carefully written on eighteen yellow sticky notes (which I've now transferred to my writer's notebook). 

I hope you'll listen to the interview, "The words that hold our souls inside them" hosted by Bill Radke. It's seventeen minutes well spent. You don't have to be a resident of Washington state to appreciate the power of words and personal experience and memory and story shared by Tod and Laura in this phenomenal interview.