Philip Metres – Dare to Care

Today is Poetry Friday. Heidi Mordhorst, at my juicy little universe, is rounding up the posts this weekend. I’m in awe of her magical poem, “Kudzudoku.” How did she do that?

Thursday evening the Stafford Challenge had a guest speaker, Philip Metres. He shared poems and his poetic values. I heard of Philip last year when he and Jessica Jacobs used the same stock artwork on the covers of their books published at around the same time. They began a conversation about their books and poetry. I mentioned them in a post here. Tonight Metres read a couple of poems from his book Fugitive / Refuge and some from his new book coming out this fall.

Metres also introduced us to Marwa Helal, an Egyptian American poet who created “The Arabic” poetry form. The Arabic form is meant to be read right to left, have one Arabic letter, an Arabic number, and an Arabic footnote. Here is one short Arabic form poem Helal wrote.

I wrote this poem after our session.