Poetry is one of the oldest forms of writing, with early forms telling stories through songs and passing history and culture from generation to generation.

A discussion on a millennia old medium that is still relevant today.

Stay with us.

(♪) Inspire is sponsored by the estate of Ray and Anne Goldsmith.

The Raymond C and Marguerite Gibson Foundation and the Louis H. Humphreys Charitable Trust.

Hello and welcome to Inspire.

I'm excited to be here with my lovely co-hosts, Betty Lou Pardue and Daniel Norwood, and we are here to admire for those who aspire to become poets.

Okay, I'm not going to quit my day job just yet, but I do love a good poem and I'm very excited for today's show.

Women in poetry.

Poetry is one of the oldest forms of writing, yet it's still relevant today.

Many don't realize that we see and hear poetry within our daily routines, and there are many keeping poetry alive here with us today to discuss the impact of poetry.

Our Melissa Fite Johnson, poet, author, and high school and English teacher, and our own Kansas Poet laureate, Tracy Brimhall.

Mellisa and Tracy, thank you for being with us, Tracy, how does one become the poet laureate?

Well, one great thing about poet poetry in Kansas and being poet laureate here, is that we have a very open and democratic process for selection of a poet laureate.

I don't personally know the governor, and I've never rubbed her elbow.

And there was no secret handshake or money exchanged in an alleyway.

When the previous poet laureate term is ending, there is an open application process.

So next year will be my last year, and there will be an open call for submissions from the Kansas Arts Commission.

And anybody can put in an application.

And then they look through all of those.

They get ranked and scored and the four finalists end up coming to give a sample talk in front of a panel of judges.

Again, with no secret handshakes or alley way money, but then they use that to sort of determine who they think the next laureate should be.

And currently we're, the state of Kansas offers a four year term for serving the state in this role.

Okay.

Well, we want to find out what you do, but, Melissa, you are getting budding students interested in poetry.

How do you do that?

Oh, I try very hard to just demolish a lot of preconceived notions that people have about poetry.

Like a lot of stereotypes like the, you know, beret and the snapping, and the idea that none of it makes any sense and that it's elitist and that it is, all about gatekeeping and nobody smart enough for it.

I hate all of that.

And so I believe firmly that poetry is for everyone.

And I do whatever I can to prove that I love introducing them to accessible poets.

And, I have this great video that I show them about, rhyme in rap, and it's amazing.

And it really, like, kind of blows their minds.

And so I try all kinds of things to get them excited.

I introduced my unit with an essay called A Poetry and Professional Wrestling.

I won't get into all of, but yeah, I do whatever I can to just like, get rid of that stigma that it's a snobby thing.

So yeah, let me say I wish that you were my English teacher back in the day.

You would have made poetry come more alive.

Are you really getting into poetry?

I know as somebody who was in debate and forensics that that was like a big component of that particular piece, but are youth finding it on their own?

Are they getting into it?

Are they excited about poetry?

I feel like there was a minute where it was there was a Taylor Swift effect.

And also Instagram and TikTok have been huge for introducing young writers to other young poets.

And I found lots getting it that way.

And also through Poetry Out Loud.

I've met lots of young people who like poetry, though.

It's interesting that those who go through poetry out loud, many find it through forensics, and they really like older poets.

A lot of young people say they love Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost, and that they do end up really liking a lot of the classic poets.

If they come from that direction also.

Melissa, what do you think?

I think that a lot of them think they don't like it until they read some of it.

Like, I think they're basing it sometimes off of only having read old older poets like, you know, they think it has to rhyme or have a strict meter.

I think that once they read more kinds of poetry, a lot of them love it.

And, you know, I try to point out to them that it doesn't make any sense to say I hate poetry.

It would be like saying, I hate music or I hate books.

Like they just maybe don't like the kind that they've been exposed to.

And for many of them, it's a very tiny fraction of what exists.

And so I just try to open up the world Invictus.

And it would have turned anybody off the poetry.

But that's just my own personal thought.

Yeah.

It's just yeah, it's not going to be the thing that hooks people.

So what drew each of you to poetry?

I mean, it's not like you're five years old and said, you know, when I.

Mom and dad, well, you know, I'm going to be a poet.

I mean, what I mean, obviously what was the journey?

I imagine it's different to every person, but what was it for each of you?

Well, I could say that I fell in love with poetry accidentally.

Because I took a creative writing class in college, and I was like, I'll just suffer through the poetry.

And then, I was, like, excited for the fiction.

And then the joke was on me because that class turned me.

I was taught by a poet.

Yeah.

And I just, I had I was like the students I'm describing.

I had never really studied contemporary poems, and I was interested in storytelling, and it hadn't occurred to me that poetry could be a way of storytelling.

And I was like, oh, of course it is.

And so, yeah, I fell in love with the idea of a whole story contained in a very small space, like just like capturing a moment, telling a story by boiling it down.

Tracy, what was it like for you?

I have a similar.

It was the college.

I was going to write the Great American Novel, but then I had a great poetry teacher, and I think, you know, in high school I only read Dead People, and I still feel very close to some dead people.

But I, I remember my poetry teacher doing a very classic poet teacher thing and just sitting crisscross applesauce on the desk and reading Walt Whitman aloud to us.

And she read, after class, we were hanging out in front of the library, and she read this poet Sharon Olds aloud.

Favorite poet.

And I felt my soul sit straight up inside my body, and I felt awake in a way that I hadn't felt awake before.

And I just it was intimate, and I felt connected to a stranger, and I felt less alone because of a poem.

And I think that's always what I hope my poems can do.

Is a lonely 19 year old hears them in front of a library, from a teacher, and it's like, oh my gosh, I didn't know other people were experiencing the world in this way.

That they're thinking these things and feeling these things and that you can get so intimate so fast in a poem, and get so close to the center of a person.

And, it just shook me awake in a way that very few other things have.

You know, you mentioned you like the dead poets, and of course, you referred to Taylor Swift and her Dead Poets Society.

Of course, you know.

So and then the movie and so there's just so much about that.

But I do want to bring us back to poetry out loud, because that's something that, Katie, you is very much involved with, as are you.

Please explain more about that.

So Poetry Out Loud is an incredible national program.

There are very few arts where you can go to the national stage with that art.

And it's so exciting that high schoolers across the United States get a chance to compete within their high schools and regionals, going to state to poetry recitation.

I think that's incredible.

And then our state finalists go to D.C. to compete nationally.

Which is so incredible that you can just read poems, recite poems, bring them to life, and compete on a national scale this way, which I just think is really cool, for young people to discover and to discover poems this way.

So there's three rounds that students compete in.

They do have to read, a poet who before the 20th century.

But what I find so interesting is some of their poem selections bring alive poets and poems that I didn't know or hadn't heard performed out loud.

I'd only read them in the quiet of like a library, Carol.

Like studying.

And so I just I love hearing young people bring these words to life, bring their emotion into their reading of these poems.

And before I gave my binder back this year, I ripped out several pages and to them in my purse because I was like, I need to hand copy these poems that I love in a journal.

So I love writing poems, but I also really love reading poems.

And when I feel far away from my own creative self, I do like to just hand copy poems that I love into books, to just have my favorite lines, to have my favorite poems with me as a sort of comfort.

So I feel like the only way to enjoy poetry doesn't have to be writing, or it also doesn't have to be reading.

You can also engage with and interact with the art of writing in a variety of ways.

Whether it's oral and performing it or writing it, or hand copying a poem.

That isn't even your own, but I just find it.

The poem reveals new secrets to me when I reshape it letter by letter, I see something new in it.

So I love finding new ways to love language.

This is so cool.

I have so many questions, but we need to take a short break right now.

But we'll be back to continue our Women in Poetry discussion, so please stay with us.

We're back to continue our discussion on one of the oldest forms of writing poetry with Tracy and Melissa.

So we were talking during the break about, you know, poetry and some of your pieces being published and other, people wanting to read your poetry at other gatherings, maybe even on PBS for a poetry out loud gathering in another state.

How does that work?

And then also, is this something where people can make bank?

Because I'm sure there are plenty of people that are writing out poems.

It's like, you know what, I could use this as a way to make a living.

Is it?

Lucrative?

Or is it something that you just really are like a starving artist?

And I'm going to start with you because you are the most expressive about this.

So Melissa, let me know, is it something that you're just really passionate about that you give your all to, but you're not going to be making a whole lot of bank doing it?

Okay.

No, I, I mean, if you can think of any let me know.

But I, I can't think of any living poet really who that is.

Their entire job is just, I mean, like most are professors too or, you know, do something else as well.

And there aren't very many living poets who are household names either.

Like most of the most famous poets that you know, everyone could name if you're not studying it or anything, they're dead.

You know, when Maya Angelou died, I was like, and that's the last one I'm I don't know.

And so that's something I think about, like, even if you get, you know, offered publication for a book, chances are you spent more than you're going to make, more on submission fees, sending it to, you know, a bunch of places, hoping one of them would publish you.

And it's just.

Yeah, it's.

I don't know.

What are your thoughts on that?

I think it stinks, but there's no that there's no, there's not a lot of money in the arts sometimes.

And so I do try to, be a good advocate for.

So as poet laureate, I've tried with most of my initiatives to be able to compensate in some way, other people or also to advocate for arts to be paid, and compensated in some way, because I think it we shouldn't think that art is it should be accessible.

But we also want to support artists, and we want them to and have an expression of the value of their time, their investment in their skill and craft.

And, you know, so sometimes I too, like go to the market and I see that, you know, handmade mug is $50 and I'm like, oh my gosh.

But how long did it take them to get good at clay in order to make them?

I could get something from the Dollar Tree.

I want to support artists.

It's really important to me that I put art from local artists on my walls, and that my cute coffee cups came from, you know, the people in my community who make art.

And so I do try and advocate for the value of art in all ways.

But also one thing that sort of saves poetry is that there's not a lot of money in it.

We aren't going to be on the New York Times bestsellers list, but that we aren't going to be on Good Morning America and thank goodness, because then there's just so much less, competition or backstabbing.

Nobody's crawling their way to the top of the poetry mountain.

And so I feel like it's not always true, but I feel like poets tend to be very generous, very open, very passionate and committed people to the art where you still want to value the art, but there's not millions of dollars on the table.

And so there's not a lot of, tension or infighting or unkindness in the community because we're all just out here making stuff together.

And I think it tends to feel very community based and definitely.

Yeah, like, I think poets, a pretty generous group who like to support each other and see each other thrive.

On the whole, I'm sure there are people who don't, but mostly surrounding ourselves with the right poets.

Right.

I think that was yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I'm curious about the writing process.

When you decide you're going to write a poem or you're asked to write a poem, you know, about goats or or whatever, like we talked about break.

I mean, how does that look when you sit down and you've got the blank piece of paper or your or your computer, what's the writing process like for each of you?

Yeah.

I mean, I'm sure that is different for everybody.

For me, I think the most important thing is just making the time and taking the pressure off a little bit.

And so I try to have like a weekly, date with myself at the coffee shop and I that's just my time.

And as long as I'm working on something poetry related, I don't put any more pressure on myself than that.

So sometimes I write an actual poem.

That's a really great day when that happens, so I'm not feeling it.

I'll revise poems, or I'll send work out for publication, as long as it's just time to work on this part of my life and not like my actual paying job or anything else.

And that feels really wonderful.

And I think it's great when you feel inspired, but a lot of my students think that's like, all it is, is you just like you're inspired and then you write and, you know, even if you are asked to write about in my case, it was quilts for the state fair.

That's what, you know, that's what I signed up for.

And so I wrote my quilt poem.

But it's it's not like I just sat around waiting for inspiration to strike you just, you know, sometimes you have to get creative with it.

You read poems to get yourself in the mood or prompts, you know, are really great.

You just have to.

Or just making a date with the friends and, you know, inspiring each other.

That can work too.

We want to hear some of your poems.

Plus we want to know how it makes you feel.

I mean, you know, you you alluded to a lot of years earlier, but it would be so much more fun to hear, you know, what?

What it can do for others as well.

So we'll be right back with Tracy and Melissa.

So please stay with us.

Turn again.

Oh, my sweetest turn again.

False and fleeting.

This beaten way thou be test I fear is hell's on track.

Nay, too steep for hill.

Mountain.

Nay, too late for costs.

Counting this downhill path is easy.

But there's no turning back.

My name is Cheryl Germann and I teach, junior high and high school English and teach in Kansas.

And I am the state coordinator for Poetry Out Loud in Kansas.

Poetry Out Loud is a national recitation contest that invites high schoolers to recite poetry from memory in order to become more involved with the poetry.

And they have an opportunity to travel to Washington, D.C., where they can win cash prizes for themselves and their school.

Nine years ago, a piece of mail came across my desk for Poetry Out loud.

At the time, I had a student who was very and poetry, and so I just asked her if she was interested in competing.

She was she became the state champion the two years that she was eligible to participate.

After that, I became the regional coordinator for Poetry Out Loud in my area of the state.

And four years ago I became the state coordinator.

I love seeing the students interpret poetry in a way that touches their lives.

A lot of times you see kids take a poem that on the surface, you would know how they connect to, and they beautifully tell a story that brings the poetry alive to the audience.

Often poetry doesn't seem cool to teenagers.

I think they typically get drawn into poetry out loud through a lot of performing.

Some of them do have a true love of poetry, but a lot of them come from forensics or things like that, and get involved with it and then find a love of poetry once they are participating.

The opportunity to go to Washington, D.C. is certainly an attraction, but for most of these kids, they have or develop a love for the poetry that they're performing.

Poetry is an amazing art form.

The precision with which the words are chosen, the way that they're put on the page is all very purposeful, and it's finite.

It's very small, a little piece of an experience that we can all share it, and the ability to relate to that develops empathy.

And a student develops character traits that they might pick up, not pick up in another way.

I think that poetry is a beautiful art form that is often underappreciated, by teenagers.

But once they're introduced to it appropriately, once they experience it, they're the perfect age to see that love of poetry grow.

And for me personally, I have seen a great impact from the program through my own students that have been involved.

The student who originally became involved in Poetry Out Loud, along with me, has went on to become a poet, publishing her first book just this past year.

She's shared her poetry in many, many ways throughout the years, but just recently finally fulfilled that dream of publishing her own book of poetry.

But for other students who maybe didn't continue down the road of a specific poetry path, they feel more comfortable speaking to others.

They are more likely to stand up and present through any means.

And they all come away with a greater appreciation for the art form as well.

I think that people encounter poetry in many ways every day without even realizing it, through music, through inspirational quotes and things that you see on your social media feeds.

There's a lot of poetry, poetic elements in those things.

Poetry out loud just helps bring poetry more to the forefront of the students minds and share it in a way that truly brings it alive.

We are back, and I have been very much looking forward to this segment as we as we feature Melissa and Tracy's own poems.

So, Melissa, let's start with you.

You have a poem to share.

Yes, I think Tracy and I both decided to bring poems about Kansas.

So this is called Nothing to See here.

Don't let the title mislead you.

Nothing to see here.

No see to hear.

Just flat Kansas Plains, middle of somewhere, a girls T-shirt once said, and I smiled as we crossed paths in our small Midwest town.

I loved that t shirts.

As much as I hate my mother's.

That says life is good because she doesn't mean it.

It's just nice to say like, thank God.

Middle of somewhere reminded me of my uncle, the artist who once visited from Providence, which I might write even if it weren't true.

The symbolism too perfect.

But that's where he lived and what he gave me while his wife and my mother sisters thought to escape, we took a drive when I apologized for the plane plains, believing the Kansas flyover myth, he called it the bluest sky he'd ever seen.

He went on and on about wheat fields.

I couldn't name one beautiful thing in my life, but he wanted to paint every abandoned barn.

Something to see here.

Oh, that.

Oh, wow.

Forcing me to think.

I talked about what we wanted to say and how poetry can really make you feel something.

And when you talked about Sharon Olds, right.

You know, in you both love that poem in That poet, when you were the same age and it spoke to you, it sounds like so similarly, I think so, yeah.

Yeah.

I think again, there's just something about in such a short space, we just like heard so much from Melissa and we're able to like, see this moment in her life and connect with with that moment.

And, you know, I think many of us have lived through similar moments.

I sometimes like to say, you know, when like an answer rhymes with another or B like our lives have rhymed.

The poems don't have to.

But I think the feeling it gives us is that, oh gosh, that's almost the same moment in mine.

So even though I haven't lived exactly that moment, I understand the feeling inside me rhymes with the feelings that Melissa is sharing.

Let's hear your poem.

Yeah.

My poem is called Ad Astra because it's my ode to Kansas.

Ad astra.

The story we tell the future will have windmills and the quiet clap of cottonwood leaves, annual festivals and old streams elbowing their way into fields that many histories ago were shallow seas.

The story will be what we make of it with our corn mazes and street corners, dirt roads and art districts, block parties and community gardens.

Our chapters will be, like our seasons, reliable in their surprises, the busy plots of our star baked summers, and the slow conclusion of winter with its catalog of snowflakes in the story we are writing to the future.

There are kids biking through the neighborhood and a great blue heron at the pond, hunting in its own shadow.

The story has the people of the wind and the people of the wandering, the rooted and the transplanted.

What comes next?

We can almost see Rain's brief signature on the sidewalk, and a chevron of migrating geese breaking up the wide open blue, a story where wind romances a dandelion and bees lounge at their favorite goldenrod saloons.

The story we are writing to the future has facts like how a sunflowers face is a union of individual seeds, all leaning towards the sun together this story grows.

It changes with each day.

It is full of possibilities, like how before dawn ripens the horizon, the night sky dreams.

One more story for the library of stars.

That is absolutely beautiful.

I wish, oh my gosh, either of you as my poetry teacher it would have changed the trajectory of my life.

Let's just say wonderful.

That is all the time that we have for today.

We definitely want to thank our Kansas Poet Laureate, Tracy Brimhall and poet, author and English teacher Melissa Fite Johnson for joining us on inspire.

And as a reminder, you can watch this program again and again.

And I would encourage that at watch.ktwu.org And if you're so inspired to learn more about our guests, find out what's coming up on future shows and get access to additional content.

Be sure to visit our website ktwu.org/inspire Inspiring women.

Inspiring poetic vision, inspiring you on KTWU.

Thank you for watching.

(♪) Inspire is sponsored by the estate of Ray and Anne Goldsmith, the Raymond C and Marguerite Gibson Foundation, and the Louis H. Humphreys Charitable Trust.