Poems of This Day for Mothers

There is a wide range of ways poets have written about mothers. Poets.org collected a few examples as we approach Mother's Day.

I have posted several times poems concerning mothers.

Burt Kimmelman's poem "Taking Dinner to My Mother" served as a model for one of our writing prompts. Looking at it again now and thinking about another post I made the year my mother would be 92 feels strange to reread because my mother didn't make it to her December birthday that year.

I wrote about a Mary Oliver poem and how my mother might react to it. Burt's poem is knowingly about his mother just before she died.

But Mother's Day shouldn't be a sad day, even if your mother is gone, it is a time to think of the happier moments. Maybe read some funny poems by Hal Sirowitz from his collection Mother Said.
Or recall something as in Li-Young Lee's "I Ask My Mother to Sing" or this old poem for children by Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Any Reader

As from the house your mother sees
You playing round the garden trees,
So you may see, if you will look
Through the windows of this book,
Another child, far, far away,
And in another garden, play.
But do not think you can at all,
By knocking on the window, call
That child to hear you. He intent
Is all on his play-business bent.
He does not hear; he will not look,
Nor yet be lured out of this book.
For, long ago, the truth to say,
He has grown up and gone away,
And it is but a child of air
That lingers in the garden there.

But my favorite poem for my mom might be one by Billy Collins about a small gift we might give on this day as a child before we knew "that you can never repay your mother," I made at least one of the lanyards that Billy wrote about giving to his mom and I found it after she died in a wooden box that I had made in Cub Scouts along with some other small gifts I had given her.  I was just as sure of their value as Billy. And we were right.

Wafa ke Baab me Tarmem ho rahi hai Shayari Image By Zakya Ghazal

Wafa ke Baab me Tarmeem ho rahi hai Ghazal

Humare Baad koi Fesla Huaa hai Kiya?

Man Adrift

He felt at times as if he were still in the Navy,
adrift on the sea, peering down through the vents

the way he used to squint through binoculars
on deck duty, keeping a lookout for objects

of interest. Life in the attic was humdrum.
His motel was a drydocked boat whose guests

endlessly watched television, exchanged
banalites, had sex mainly under the covers

if they had sex at all--and gave him so little
to write about that sometimes he wrote nothing at all.



From The Voyeur's Motel by Gay Talese, The New Yorker, 11 April 2016. Submitted by DawnCorrigan.

Tum Bin Shayari Ghazals in Urdu Fonts

Tum jaty ho to jao,

lekin...

bas itna sunoo

mery haq main 

dua zaroor krna

keh tum bin

main jee sakoon...!!!

Tum bin udaas hoon,

dukh ho,

dard ho, 

saaz ho, 

yaa beety dinon ki aawaz ho,

main jo kuch bhi hoon,

jo koi bhi hoon,

lekin....

"tum bin udaas hoon".

Compass Lines #2

We're in Belfast for Compass Lines #2, where I'll be in conversation with Miriam Gamble and Nerys Williams, and where the poets will present their collaboration City of Two Suns, specially commissioned for the event and published that day by the Irish Writers Centre. In addition, earlier in the day they will deliver a joint writing workshop in the Ulster Museum to a group composed of participants in various existing writing classes in Belfast.

Compass Lines is a writers� exchange project aiming to establish links between writers and communities in the North and South of Ireland, while additionally examining relationships between the East and West of these islands, through workshops, public discussions, and the commissioning of new collaborative writing.

Developed by poet, editor and curator Christodoulos Makris in collaboration with the Irish Writers Centre as producing organisation, and with the participation of the Crescent Arts Centre as partner venue.


Compass Lines #2
Miriam Gamble & Nerys Williams
Wednesday 11 May 2016, Crescent Arts Centre, Belfast
7.30pm, entry via Eventbrite �8/�6 or on the door �10/�8

Miriam Gamble is from Belfast, but now lives in Edinburgh. She is a graduate of both Oxford and Queens University Belfast and in 2007 she won an Eric Gregory Award for her pamphlet with Tall-lighthouse entitled This Man�s Town. Her first full-length collection, The Squirrels are Dead (2010) won a Somerset Maugham Award in 2011, and Pirate Music followed in 2014, both of which are published by Bloodaxe.

Originally from West Wales, Nerys Williams lectures in American Literature at University College, Dublin and is a Fulbright Alumnus of UC Berkeley. She has published poems and essays widely and is the author of A Guide to Contemporary Poetry (Edinburgh UP, 2011) and a study of contemporary American poetics, Reading Error (Peter Lang, 2007). Nerys�s first volume, Sound Archive (Seren, 2011), was shortlisted for the Felix Denis (Forward) prize and won the Rupert and Eithne Strong first volume prize in 2012. She is the current holder of the Poetry Ireland Ted McNulty Poetry Prize.

Luminous

cross lights
water
sanctuary lights



A handwritten note in desk bought from a church in 2015. Submitted by Travis Poling.

Prompt: Never Born

Looking at the title of Thomas Lux's poem, "For My Sister," we might expect a poem on a fairly common subject. There are many poems addressing directly or indirectly sisters and brothers. But this poem is not typical.

For My Sister

Forever we've never spoken.
First, our mother died
and, soon after, our father.
He would've loved you, and I understood why
when your niece, my daughter, arrived.
You'd look like her. She is already twenty-five. 

This is a sister who was never born. The poet wonders "Were you younger than me, or older? / I always wished for younger."

With both his parents now gone, the poet wonders about what he is left with and what is lost.

I have a box of papers: a deed
for pastureland, naturalization forms,
boneyard plots, many pictures, certificates
of births and deaths�though none of,
nor for, nor of, you.

In Thomas Lux's collection, To the Left of Time  (Mariner Books) from which "For My Sister" (click link for the full poem) is taken, there are three sections. One section is semi-autobiographical poems and another is odes, and this poem seems that it might exist in both categories.

Lux is known for his satire and humor and his images both figurative and in plain language.

In this poem for a sister who never existed, he spends most of the poem talking about his mother and father and his own daughter. In some ways, it is a message that tries to update this sister on what her life would have been.

When I first read this poem, I thought of a story that my mother often told about the doctor telling her when she was first pregnant with me that she was going to have twins. There was no twin. Never was a twin, but my mother had prepared for two of us and as a child hearing this story, I sometimes wondered about that sister or brother that never appeared.

This month's prompt is to write a poem for or about a sibling who was never born.

Submission deadline: May 31, 2016