The American poet William Stafford once said, “Everyone is born a poet—a person discovering the way words sound and work, caring and delighting in words. I just kept on doing what everyone starts out doing. The real question is: Why did other people stop?”
The universality of poetry: That’s a major theme that this year’s One Book One Community program at the East Baton Rouge Parish Library (EBRPL) sets out to explore. Whether you’re a poetry newbie or a veritable virtuoso of verse, events and activities throughout the annual community reading program emphasize the message, poetry is for everyone.
In this year’s selection, the anthology You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World, some of the nation’s most accomplished poets have looked to the natural world in search of inspiration. And there, whether in potted flowers gathered on a fire escape, or deer wandering through a cemetery—in their discovery, their wondering, they created art.
This is the mission the library proposes to readers during this 20th One Book One Community season: consider, discover, wonder, and create art. In addition to a slate of hands-on nature programming and poetry workshops offered throughout the spring, EBRPL invites patrons to contribute to a community-sourced poetry anthology of its own.
"We hope many will feel moved to write their own responses to the ‘You Are Here’ prompt. It’s simple: ‘What would you write in response to the landscape around you?’ ”
—Ada Limón, former United States Poet Laureate
“We encourage everyone, everywhere—poets and non-poets—to join us in our efforts to celebrate poetry and the natural world,” said Ada Limón, former United States Poet Laureate and editor of You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World. “We hope many will feel moved to write their own responses to the ‘You Are Here’ prompt. It’s simple: ‘What would you write in response to the landscape around you?’”
Bringing together a diverse group of voices—those of amateurs and experienced poets alike—representing Baton Rouge and the natural systems that surround and sustain it, the collection will be published digitally on databases available for free to all library patrons, BiblioBoard and Press Books.
Librarian Brandon Reilly says that the East Baton Rouge Parish Library is looking for “voices that connect, frame, and ground people’s experiences, dreams, wants, relationships, traumas, anecdotes, retellings, and truth to their experience and understanding of what is ‘nature’ and what is ‘natural.’ The goal is to create a book that weaves together our community’s experience of itself framed by the natural world, howsoever one defines it.”
Don’t Be Shy. There’s no need for the work to be poet laureate worthy, Reilly reassures. Every poem submitted (so long as it is deemed safe, appropriate, and respectful) will be included in the anthology. “It’s really about this testament, ‘Hey, I was here. And I wrote a poem.’”
Learn more and submit your work at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfS4Vz_pslOYim-U-_U3cyzMbQMDM8_LqFDzurzXYV5lxhnnA/viewform
