CHRIS RICE COOPER BLOG is ART and HUMANITY Framed In The PhotoFeature Story : the women anthology KNOW ME HERE beneficial to all edited by Katherine Hastings . . .

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KNOW ME HERE

An Anthology of Poetry by Women

“to enter as one wound, to exit as one healing”

In 2006 poet Katherine Hastings determined her commute from Sonoma County to the San Francisco Bay area to hear poetry was too time consuming and exhausting. She decided to create a poetry group in her own community called WordTemple Poetry Series. The group also became a radio show in 2007 – the monthly WordTemple on NPR affiliate KRCB FM.

Hastings got the idea to do an anthology of the women poets who were part of the World Temple Poetry Series and the radio program. It was to be the first anthology of its kind – the first all women anthology published under the first woman president. Hastings was deeply discouraged, disheartened by the Presidential results. She was so overwhelmed by these emotions that she considered for a moment to kill the project.

But soon – she changed her mind because she knew the anthology was not a matter of choice but need, especially during these intense and troubling times. She continued to send out invitations to women poets and writers to submit to the anthology Know Me Here and the rest is history. On July 7, 2017 Word Temple Press published Know Me Here An Anthology of Poetry by Women edited with an Introduction by Katherine Hastings.

This is not an anthology of political poetry, and yet it is. It can’t help but be. The poems are women by women and they are appearing in the first year of a presidency that finds Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaids Tale, Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me and George Orwell’s 1984 flying off the shelves for good reason.

--Excerpt, Introduction page xii

Know Me Here is the project by women for women but beneficial to all. The cover art “Woman” is by artist Flo Berger-Doyle; and 46 women contributed to this project: (names, web links, and photos are at the end of this piece).

Devreaux Baker; Ellen Bass; Elizabeth Bradfield; Janine Canan; Maxine Chernoff; Susan Cohen; Elizabeth J. Coleman; Gillian Conoley; Lucille Lang Day; Sharon Doubiago; Susan Kelly-DeWitt; Camille T Dungy; Iris Jamahl Dunkle; Sandy Eastoak; Terry Ehret; Annie Finch; Molly Fisk; Miriam Bird Greenberg; Judy Halebsky; Elizabeth Herron; Brenda Hillman; Jane Hirshfield; Jodi Hottel; Maya Khosla;
Lynne Knight; Danusha Lameris; Kathleen Lynch; Mary Mackey; Colleen McElroy; Jane Mead; Toni Mirosevich; Rusty Morrison; Gwynn O’Gara; Connie Post; Kim Shuck; Hannah Stein; Melissa Stein; Jennifer K Sweeney; Julia Vose; Laura Walker; Gillian Wegener; Arisa White; Toni Wilkes; Leonore Wilson; Kathleen Winter; and Pui Ying Wong.

These poems speak of the woman’s spirit recognizing the problems and the turmoil of our day and recognizing that the same woman’s spirit has the power to conquer all of these issues through the power of poetry and the power of being woman. (Right painting attributed to Salvador Dali)

Know me here, where the wind dreams of us

as her lost tribe

where the universe weaves our bodies together

as one fabric

and we open ourselves to welcome the spring

to enter as one wound, to exit as one healing.

--excerpt “Invocation For Spring” by Devreaux Baker

We as women are confronted with genocide and breast cancer in Devreaux Baker’s poem “We Show Each Other Our Scars;” dying and death in Ellen Bass’s “Taking Off the Front of the House;” gun violence and homicide in Elizabeth Bradfield’s “Dancing From the Summer;” alienation in Janine Canan’s “Acceptance;” resilience in Maxine Chernoff’s “Cuchulain;” forest fires and its devastation in Susan Cohen’s “Golden Hills

of California;” gender equality in Elizabeth J. Coleman’s “Fearless;” Gillian Conoley’s plea for peace in “The House of Secrets;” suicide bombers, police brutality, and filicide in

Lucille Lang Day’s “Wanjina;” grief in Sharon Doubiago’s “In the Lake;” immigration rights and appreciation of all cultures in Camille T. Dungey’s “What I Know I Cannot Say;” nuclear disaster in Iris Jamahl Dunkle’s “On Hearing that the Radiation From Fukushima Has Reached the West Coast;” the importance

of environmentalism in Sandy Eastoak’s “River;” identity in Terry Ehret’s “Half A Woman;” motherhood in Annie Finch’s “Being A Constellation;” mental health in Molly Fisk’s “North of Tomales;” Global Warming in Miriam Bird Greenberg’s “Before the World Went to Hell;” naturalism in Judy Halebsky’s

“Bristlecone Pine;” mortality in Elizabeth C Herron’s “Holy Day 3 November 28, 2016;” the right to privacy in Brenda Hillman’s “In A House Sub-Committee on Electronic Surveillance;” anatomy in Jane Hirshfield’s “My Skeleton;” the Japanese Internment Camps ordered by President Roosevelt in Jodi Hottel’s “Unwritten Note;” an elegy dedicated

to Georgia O’Keeffe in Susan Kelly-DeWitt’s “Callas;” spirituality in Maya Khosla’s “Migration Into Bhutan;” the unity of women in Lynne Knight’s “The Silence of Women;” the fertile and the baron in Danusha Lameris’s “Egg;” our ancestors in Kathleen Lynch’s “Letter to an Unmet

Grandmother;” break-ups in Mary Mackey’s “L. Tells All;” sisterhood in Colleen McElroy’s “The Alchemists;” water conservationism in Jane Mead’s “Money;” war and peace in Toni Mirosevich’s “Back Up;” limitations in Rusty Morrison’s “Our Aptitude For Perishing;” childbirth in Gwynn O’Gara’s “The Spirits That Lend Strength Are

invisible;” compassion and empathy in Connie Post’s “Charlie, A Boy In My Son’s Group Home;” culture in Kim Shuck’s “Going To Water In More Than One Dialect;” sexual assault in Melissa Stein’s “Quarry;” animal rights in Jennifer K Sweeney’s “In the House of Seals;” the importance of oneness with nature in Laura Walker’s “Genesis;” the wonder of pink roses in Julia Vose’s “Out of Center, Look Back In;” the

weary traveler in Gillian Wegener’s “Road Song, North On 99;” Vision in Toni Wilkes’s “Resilience;” the death of a mother’s child in Leonore Wilson’s “The Tumor;” and an elegy on poet and feminist Sylvia Plath in Kathleen Winter’s “Glamour.”

These poems cover almost every topic known to womanhood, but the most compelling poems are the ones that deal with day-to-day life. These poems remind us that life continues through the good and the bad; and that we as women will savor the good and conquer through the bad with zest, resistance, and joy.

And even when the despairing, paralyzing, darkening times come where all joy is gone and all the answers are absent we as women are still conquerors by just standing on our own two feet.
Katherine Hastings above right in 2009 and left in 2017.

Come on, girl, get up

Dance, dance,

Get up and dance

--Excerpt, Devreaux Baker’s “Dancing At the Round House”