-The following is the poem I wrote and read at my friend Alwyn Moss’s (November 3, 1926 – April 21, 2022) memorial service at the Quaker House in Blacksburg, where there was music, poems and Open Worship sharing and story telling. The second poem I read, First Tree (a gingko) is one of Alwyn’s from […]
Picking a poem for a reading is like playing spin the bottle when you’re 13 years’ old Do you want to be picked? Are you rewarded with a kiss? or happy with your lucky miss? _______Colleen Redman / Poets and Storytellers United
I The moon likes to shine from different angles It changes its pose and each one is whole Not one thing I say one and move on like the moon across the sky I orbit round and back again Always changed but the same II Don’t tell me the moon is always full I can […]
Poetry Society of Virginia’s Vice President Angie Dribben heads up a creative writing group at the Jessie Peterman Library in Floyd. Local poets joined with some of the group’s poets and other members of the Poetry Society of Virginia for an Open Mic on Saturday that Dribben’s emceed. Jack Callan, co-founder of the annual Little […]
I carry my pen like a lonely heart ready for a love letter ready to be won over and swept off my feet by the desire to meet the poem of my dreams ___________Colleen Redman / Read Part I The Break-up HERE. Poets and Storytellers United
I lost interest in the poem I was writing like I did with my boyfriends in high school I agreed to go steady but then didn’t know how to say ‘I like you but not like that’ I want to be friends with poetry I want to find the right one But some poetry is […]
Pack it up Sell off the parts Let it drop Become a disembodied name that slips the mind Fall out of character Start at the end and take a number Walk through walls or walk on water Become the air for others to breathe A memory that floats like a fragrance _____Colleen Redman / Poets […]
This call may be monitored This call may be dropped from a landline sinking on an iceberg floating as the planet unravels like a spool of thread and you can’t move the needle or pull the frayed edge through This call may be disconnected from an unplugged grid where nothing is normal and all the […]
We mostly read to ourselves, those from the Artemis Journal table at the Taubman Museum for Roanoke Arts Pop! But we met other poets, and for Katherine and I, it was another notch in our Grief and Relief Soulful Aging Reading Tour, which lately I’ve been calling the “Still Acting Our Age Tour.” The Arts […]
Thoughts reverberate Mind is a bell I look to hold the clapper to match my breath with the mantra But moonlighting at night takes a toll I follow the echo of thoughts that ring hollow and those that strike a resonance and warrant attention Sometimes I play dead toss and turn the other cheek where […]
I imagine it as a tattoo like Tupac’s ‘Thug Life’ and Meyer’s ‘Home Life’ I’d more prefer ‘Ocean Life’ but the water’s too cold today and it wouldn’t make as good a tattoo So I swim in the gentle blue and let the ocean call like the pull of wild love I’ll eventually answer to […]
You wouldn’t tell that you thought you were a mother when you were three-years-old that you lived in the Germantown projects and had a baby carriage for your baby doll And you wrote 100 poems before you wrote this one like a veteran who doesn’t talk about the war You were the mother in the […]