She recited the poems of Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, William Stafford and her own, her voice softly stepping through the leaves of pages on the forest floor, so as not to disturb the listeners who drank from the stream of consciousness.
Wyatt Townley, Poet Laureate of Kansas, spoke to a small but appreciative audience at Iola Public Library on Friday.
She spurred the audience to think deeply on the subject of home. What is home? Where is it? Kansas is home on the range, and there’s no place like it, but nailing down what makes a home is different for everyone and changes, she said.
She talked about everything from astronauts looking back at their home of Earth from outer space to prisoners reciting poems in their jail cells to carry home in their hearts.
Home, Townley said, is both micro and macro.
“Perhaps it’s even invisible,” she said.
Townley, a fourth-generation Kansan whose great-grandparents settled here before the Homestead Act, encouraged listeners to bring themselves home to poetry and to bring poetry home to themselves.
As Poet Laureate, she also asked those interested in writing poetry to participate in her project to write about home in the form of the American Cinquain — a short poem five lines long with two syllables in the first line, four in the second line, then six, eight and two syllables in the last line. Selected poems will be featured in Townley’s weekly column, which is published in newspapers across the state.
“Writing can be a lot of fun,” Townley said. “The page is a playground.”
More information on how to participate in this poetry project can be found at Iola Public Library or online at kansashumanities.org/programs/poet-laureate-of-kansas/
