The Gift of Poemographs

Enjoy a free e-book download of photography inspired poems

What’s happening in your world on this 237th day of January? Theoretically sunset finally reached 5 p.m. this week though I’ve yet to see it through the rain, clouds, and fog that have been blanketing my curve of Washington’s Hood Canal with assorted grays and whites in sheets and fluffs, streaks and puffs. I wish I was one of those people who bundled up and went outside anyway, like those annoyingly healthy Norwegians practicing Friluftsliv when they aren’t cozying up with the Danes and their hygge.

I’m wearing sweats day and night, sipping from a bottomless commuter cup of tea, and have been writing a poem a day with intention of doing so for a full year. Ten poems down, only 346 to go in the Stafford Challenge which began on January 16th, birthday of the late poet William Stafford, inspiration for the challenge and Pacific Northwest treasure. There are 1,150 people who’ve joined in, and every day there are a few posts in our Facebook group wondering where the prompts are. Most writing groups offer them, and it’s nice to respond to a suggestion rather than dream up an idea for a poem from thin air.

For several years now I’ve been taking photographs as a contemplative practice and using my photos as springboards for poetry. I’ve been sharing the photos with an email list for several years, and have been including a poem with the photo for the past year. If you’d like to join in, send me an email.

Many of you may know that April is National Poetry Month and there are often daily poetry challenges. Back in April 2021 when we were still fairly cloistered pandemic-wise, and which feels like light years ago, I created an anthology from the best of the photos and poetic responses to the photos I received from a dozen writers. The writers in the anthology range from prolific and well published poets, like my brother-in-law Sterling Warner, to new poetic and prophetic voices like my dear friend from junior high school, Lisa Sadleir-Hart.

I titled our collaboration Poemographs, and I’ve made it available free on Kindle from today through end of day January 30th. You don’t need a Kindle device to read the book. You can read it on a computer with the Kindle cloud reader, or on a smart phone with the Kindle app.

My hope is that Poemographs will inspire some of the poets who’ve undertaken the Stafford Challenge. And my not-so-secret agenda is to cultivate creativity by spreading community-based poetry far and wide. If you haven’t seen this anthology before, I’d love for you to download Poemographs now as my gift. Please feel free to share this post or the link with friends and family.

There can never be too much poetry in the world!

January will end, eventually. In the meantime, I leave you with my photo & poem from January 16th.

Shadow Song

Wise ones teach to search for light
and of course they can’t be wrong

Yet rain runs down, and night does dim
and glory lasts not long

In dark and gray our choice becomes
to sing the shadows’ song

-Cathy Warner