“The poem, to me, is a conversation between people,” writes Alex Dimitrov in the latest Craft Capsule installment, in which he talks about his 2014 project Night Call involving reading drafts of poems from his second book, Together and by Ourselves (Copper Canyon Press, 2017), to strangers in their apartments in New York City. Through intimate conversations and exchanges, he is forever connected with these lives and places as the poem “keeps people’s voices and things right there, outside time.” Write an essay inspired by a conversation with a stranger you met in passing, whether at a grocery store, on a train, in a park, or elsewhere. Challenge yourself, as Dimitrov does, by including gestures or specific phrases you recall into the essay. How were you changed by this brief exchange?

Austrian poet Friederike Mayröcker, who the German Academy for Language and Literature in Darmstadt once stated made German literature richer with her “streams of language, word inventions, and associations,” died last Friday at age ninety-six. Acclaimed for her poetry, Mayröcker also wrote novels, memoirs, drama, radio plays, and children’s books. In each work, she created new ways for her language to flow freely, such as in her 1988 story “my heart my room my name,” which was written entirely without punctuation, and her book-length lament Requiem for Ernst Jandl, which exhibits a liberal use of capitalization. This week, inspired by Mayröcker, write a story with a protagonist whose perspective requires an associative, free-flowing use of language. How does pushing the limits of language produce a fresh perspective?

Hey mi gente, thanks for joining me for another blog post, and a big thank you to all who read these posts. As my time as literary outreach coordinator comes to a close, I will continue to highlight all things literary in Houston, and how the city leads the way with great community work.

First, I would like to shine a light on all the organizations and literary journals doing the work during the pandemic and keeping the doors open: Public Poetry, Nuestra Palabra, Defunkt Magazine, Inprint, Stages Theatre, and Poetry Around Houston, to name a few. They adapted and created new ways for literature to stay alive. Some organizations flipped their live scheduled events and adapted them into Zoom or Facebook Live events while others switched to podcasts. The most important effect is that the public benefited from it all. These aren’t the only examples. So many individual artists are making waves and collaborating to make words come alive in the city, and as we approach the summer, new events are beginning to blossom and it is beautiful to see.

Speaking of, two Houston grantees from our United States of Writing Project Grants, Omer Ahmed and Joy Priest, will each be hosting events in the coming weeks. Ahmed is collaborating with Loyce Gayo to lead a three-part workshop series focused on community identity in the face of gentrification. You can check out the upcoming sessions on June 10 and June 17 which are open to all communities in Houston, not just writers. Priest and Aris Kian will be cohosting the “Poet &” reading series, which will highlight and support Houston poets who have careers or practices outside of writing, including myself! The readings are scheduled for June 15, June 22, and June 29.

And finally, a shout-out to Deborah DEEP Mouton—who keeps it ever so real, always doing the work—for being a part of the planning committee and participating in events for last weekend’s third annual Fresh Arts Summit. If you missed it, videos from the keynote kick-off event and other panels are available on YouTube through July 5.

“I wrote a good omelet… and ate / a hot poem… after loving you,” writes Nikki Giovanni in her poem “I Wrote a Good Omelet.” The renowned and prolific poet describes going about various common tasks in strange and humorous ways, replacing, for example, “car” for “coat” in the phrase “drove my coat home” and “bed” for “hair” in “turned down my hair.” Through these playful reversals, Giovanni mimics the dizzying feeling of falling in love, as if the speaker is unable to focus on anything after being with their beloved. Write a poem that expresses this giddy feeling of love by using unexpected combinations of phrases and words.