What better way could there be to celebrate National Poetry Month in April this year than by writing a sonnet or three and submitting it to the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest?
Interested in trying your hand? Take a look at their website: entries@sonnetcontest.org. If you like, you can opt in for email updates. And if your are able to be in beautiful Winona, Minnesota on Tuesday, April 12, 2022, you won’t want to miss a very special sonnet celebration–readings and discussions at the Blue Heron Coffeeshop with poets Melissa Range and Ken Mogren. (I will have more later in the month on Melissa Range’s dazzling collection of poems (including sonnets) called Scriptorium (Beacon Press, Boston, 2016).
Initiated by The Crossings in Zumbrota, Minnesota, in 2001, the Poet-Artist Collaboration has been continued under the aegis of Red Wing Arts since 2020.
Back in 2010, I learned of this collaboration when I saw a flyer posted at the Northfield Public Library, and I was lucky enough to have had five poems selected to be re-interpreted by visual artists between 2010 and 2017. (Here are some posts I did in 2017 on the event, before and after.)
This year, I was pleased to hear that my poem, “Echo from Hug Point,” was selected for the 2022 Poet-Artist Collaboration. I am happy to be part of this celebration of literary and visual arts again in a new setting. It is especially nice to be included in a group of thirty-six poets, many of whose fine work is already known to me, including Rob Hardy, Diane LeBlanc, D.E. Green, Becky Bolling, Mac Gimse, Marie Gery, and Larry Gavin of Northfield, and Emilio DeGrazia, Ken McCullough, and Scott Lowry of Winona, Minnesota, as well as Joyce Sutpen, (whom I was able to hear reading her work at Content Bookstore a few years ago.) I look forward to the seeing the visual art created from all of the poets work (the art works are on exhibit at the Red Wing Depot Gallery) and to hearing everyone read at the St. James Hotel on April 29. Many of the poets are also participating in small readings during April. For a full list of who, when, and where, please see the website for Red Wing Arts.
Despite the ups and downs of March weather here in southern Minnesota (temperatures in the 60s one day, followed by nearly two inches of cold rain and then a day of snowfall) the light is longer, greening is beginning to show along with budding leaves, the birds in the garden are fashioning nests from wisps of straw and stray twigs, and birdsong begins every morning at dawn.
That means April will fast be upon us, the month when poets, too, have new songs each day.
In April 2022, I will undertake for the seventh year in a row, the National Poetry Writing Challenge to compose and share a new poem each day for thirty days. (I thought I might give myself a sabbatical this year, but have decide to try once again to rise to the challenge.) And again I am going to share the poems themselves via email. In addition, I will share the title and a little bit of backstory for each poem here on Winona Media, along with something else from the wide world of poetry.
If you received poems from me each day in April 2021 via email, and would like to continue to do so in 2022, no action is needed.
If you would like to be added to the email list to receive poems in April 2022, send me an email at winonapoet@gmail.com.
Or, if you did receive poems each day in April last year, but wish to opt out, send me an email at winonapoet@gmail.com, and I will remove you from the list.
I hope you will enjoy the sweetness of April this year, no matter what else looms, and that you will find a sense of renewal and regeneration through daily encounters with nature and art.
