Poetry is Life: How it Happened
So far, 2022 has been a jam-packed year for Yellow Arrow Publishing. We have chosen to AWAKEN in 2022, to reopen, reintroduce, reactivate, and restructure many of our core programs, including our Writers-in-Residence program (application open February 7–25), workshops (first class at the end of February!), and publications. Ann Quinn, Yellow Arrow Journal’s poetry editor and our only workshop instructor in 2020, has played a major role throughout the first month of 2022.
Her workshop “Poetry is Life” will begin again in March and as you all know, we just released the fantastic Poetry is Life: Writing with Yellow Arrow, a guidebook for both readers and writers of poetry, alike.
Find your copy of Poetry is Life in the Yellow Arrow bookstore and reserve your spot in her class today. The live reading of Poetry is Life was on February 6 and is now available on the Yellow Arrow YouTube channel: youtu.be/cg7x3c_uVwo.
So, how did it all happen?
By Ann Quinn
Our first meeting was in person. March 7, 2020, was to be the first of 12-monthly sessions—a year of poetry—in Yellow Arrow’s new house, decorated by volunteers with donated furniture and fixtures and lots of yellow paint. It still smelled a bit mildewy, but it was ours. Eight strangers gathered, with that slight prickle of mistrust—what will she ask of me, what will they think of me—but before long we were reading a poem together and parsing it and starting to break down the walls, just a little bit. Two hours later, we had shared, we had seen one another in our writing, we had eaten donuts from Hoehn’s Bakery, and we promised to come back in April.
And you know what happened next. But this class had been a dream of mine, and I was not about to let it go because of a pandemic. I called Gwen Van Velsor, Yellow Arrow’s founder, and said that I wanted to continue on Zoom. She agreed, somewhat doubtfully, I think, as long as I provided the account.
This was the class I had wanted to take, for decades. When I was 26, my mom gifted me a poetry weekend with Sandy Lyon, a poet who hosted weekend workshops in his home in Bethesda, Maryland. At that point, I had done some journaling, and I had written the occasional sonnet, but I was not alert to the magic latent in words arranged carefully and sparely on the page. And then the weekend was over, and I didn’t know how to carry this coolness on all by myself. So I returned to the rest of my messy life and was just a bit more inclined to read poems when they showed up and to wonder how the writer did that. And to take every opportunity, rare as it was, to write with others. And to return over and over to the question that Mary Oliver asks, “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
Twenty years later—after graduate school in music, a year in an ashram, a brief stint in acupuncture school, lots of freelance work, marriage, and two kids—I interviewed a neighbor, Michael Collier, former Poet Laureate of Maryland, in order to write an article about him. In preparation for our meeting, I read one of his books. I read the poems one at a time, in waiting rooms, at the playground, in the minutes between my kids’ bedtime and mine. And the poems circled in my head and made me think and wonder and see things in new ways. And after the interview, Michael gave me a book that included an essay on how he decided to become a poet. You could decide to become a poet? Your poems could be bad at first, and then gradually improve? It seems so obvious now, but at the time it felt revelatory. I began reading voraciously and getting up early to try to write. I longed to take a class, but the nearest class was an hour’s drive, if I was lucky, down 95, 495, and Connecticut Avenue, and I couldn’t count on getting back by the end of my kids’ school day. My passion slowed to a simmer. My family came first.
Then my mom died. If you’ve experienced grief, you know how life-changing it can be. And if you’re reading this, you probably know how healing poetry can be as an outlet. Now poetry felt crucial. And my kids were older. I found a way to get to Bethesda one day a week for a Poetry 101 class with Nan Fry. I got into an advanced poetry class at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, with the marvelous Lia Purpura. I’ll never forget the feeling of walking into the undergraduate classroom at 50. How keenly I felt my age, and yet at the same time I felt 12. But how my heart sang. That semester, and the following (in which I took Intermediate Poetry with Lia—and I would happily take Beginning Poetry with her, too), were days in which I carried a light in my chest—it was like a low-grade, long-lasting feeling of being in love. And still, I would cry at the slightest remembering that my mother was gone. Meanwhile, the poetry poured forth.
Lia told me about a low-residency MFA program in Tacoma, Washington. I got in. Three years later, I graduated. I had some publishing success, including a book, Final Deployment (2018) from Finishing Line Press. But I was keenly interested in teaching, and I was looking for opportunities. I volunteered to lead a writing group at my church; before long, the free class had sorted itself into a small but dedicated group of writers who were willing to be vulnerable and real, confirming that yes, this was what I wanted to do.
Doors don’t always open at first. Poetry, like any of the arts, has a certain self-imposed hierarchy, where sometimes it feels as if obscurity wins the prizes. This is a shame because poetry has so much to offer everyone. And coming out of an MFA program, many people wonder which path to take. I think everyone has an important story, and what my study has given me is a way to gently lead those who would write poetry down the path of craft, for that is where delight lies.
Gwen created Yellow Arrow to open more doors to writers who might not otherwise be heard. Teaching here, and helping edit the journal, I feel like I’m helping these voices find their way. This class has been a gift. From the very first session on Zoom, we’ve had students from the West Coast, the Midwest, the South, and even Canada. A cohesive group has formed, and while we welcome others into the class, there are eight regulars who have attended almost since the beginning (three of whom were there on the donut day). We felt it was time to show you what we’ve done so far, which is how Poetry is Life: Writing with Yellow Arrow happened. “Poetry is Life” is the class I wanted to take, all those years ago. And Poetry is Life is a way to share it with you.
You can find a copy of Poetry is Life in the Yellow Arrow bookstore and through most online distributors. Poetry is Life was compiled by Ann and includes contributions by Linda Gail Francis, Patrick W. Gibson, Jessica Gregg, Sara Palmer, Julia W. Prentice, Patti Ross, Nikita Rimal Sharma, and Jobie Townshend-Zellner. Cover art, “Coastal Vibrancy,” is by Claudia Cameron and the cover design is by Alexa Laharty.
Ann Quinn is a poet, editor, teacher, mentor, mother, and classical clarinetist. Her award-winning work has been published in Poet Lore, Potomac Review, Little Patuxent Review, Broadkill Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Haibun Today, and Snapdragon, and is included in the anthology Red Sky: Poetry on the Global Epidemic of Violence Against Women. Her chapbook, Final Deployment, is published by Finishing Line Press. She teaches at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda and for Yellow Arrow Publishing and is the poetry editor for Yellow Arrow Journal. Ann holds an MFA in poetry from Pacific Lutheran University and lives in Catonsville, Maryland with her family. Visit her at annquinn.net.
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