First Friday Poetry January 2025

I'm joining Beverly A Baird & Linda Schueler again in a year long poetry practice. On the first Friday of each Month we, and anyone else who joins, writes a poem and shares it. This year the focus is going to be on using poems to inspire us.

"January's poem is called “This Living” and comes from the Substack called “The Isolation Journals with Suleika Jaouad” but is actually written by guest poster Amber Tamblyn.

In general, we are playing around with repetition, so you could use any template you want. If this poem doesn’t appeal to you, consider using another one like Joy Harjo’s “Remember”.

I know it's actually Saturday today, but I lost track of what day of the week it is! Luckily, I've been working on this for a bit. My son wrote an "I Am From" piece when he started teacher training last fall, and suggested my husband and I write one as well. I decided this was the time to do it. It turned out to be pages long, so I've only posted the beginning of it.

Where I'm From

I am from two lovers who married young

with me on the way

who started married life in a rough cabin
rocking me in a hammock in a pine tree
while my mother hung laundry in the yard

I am from being a big sister to four siblings
two sisters and two brothers
arriving year after year

I am from my mother’s people
a clan of loggers
felling centuries old giants
as they traversed the continent
from their Menominee homeland
to the Okanagan valley

I am from my father’s people
ethnic Germans
fleeing Russia with their parents
after the little revolution
settling in Saskatchewan
before eventually moving here
to this valley

I am from parents
who set off to make their fortune
logging the great pines of the north
imagining a future of
raising sheep in these brown hills

I am from disaster
and tragedy
I am from
a falling tree
a rebounding snag
a severed spine
and internal injuries
confining my father to a wheelchair

I am from fear
as my father raged
at his wife and children
as my father raged
at his broken body
and broken dreams

I am from years of therapy
learning how to be different from my father

I am from people who did their best


If you want to read the whole thing, click here.