Porch Poems

What happens when four poets, friends for years, gather in a beautiful place to sit on a porch to talk, live, breathe, create poetry for days at a time? These friends all have led workshops and presented poetry and stories to audiences for many years. All are well-known and well respected practitioners and teachers of their craft. But these poetry days were different. These days offered the poets a chance to take a deep, reflective dive into their own approach to the art, at their own pace, with sharp, insightful input from each other. Not only were their skills examined, but also their relationships to the work, to the landscape around them, to the poems that seemed to spring from the mountain air as they laughed, cooked, mused on the porch swing, and absorbed the creative juices surrounding them in that special place. The result is this remarkable chapbook containing some of the output of those sessions over a period of several years. The poems each have distinctive voices, but they are not attributed in the text to the individuals, emphasizing the exceptional bond these poets established with each other and with their surroundings. A lovely and intriguing book.