I enter May grateful for community art spaces and the opportunity to come together to make and share and inspire. This weekend I wrapped up a productive National Poetry Month at the Red Wing Arts Poet Artist Collaboration. I met artist Lynn Brown, whose painting “Wild Again” responds to my poem “No Longer Wild.”
I recently completed Interrelations, an artist’s book drawing from Anna Botsford Comstock’s How to Keep Bees (1905). The inspiration came from Heron Tree‘s call for found poems. The journal published one poem I submitted, and I was so involved with Comstock’s book that I made Interrelations with text from Chapter XVIII, “Interrelation of Bees and Plants.” You can see more of the book on my Word and Image page. I debuted the book during a reading from The Feast Delayed at Content in Northfield.
You may find a new poem among fine words in Issue 2 of RockPaperPoem, an upcoming journal sponsored by the League of Minnesota Poets.
Although the weather has been grey, reflecting the heaviness many of us feel about COVID, wars, and racial injustice near and far, April enabled me to connect with hope. At each reading, and for several Monday evenings with a writing class at the Northfield Arts Guild, I was able to see beyond worry into the power of centering art in community. Art doesn’t always solve problems, but it shapes how I see and respond. Please watch this space for new publications and upcoming events.
Diane LeBlanc 
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