Other Voices | Life-Built Poems

OTHER VOICES: Brendan Constantine

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There is a poem written by a much-respected performing poet and the author of at least five collections of original poems, Brendan Constantine, that captures an exploration of the power of language and the creation of meaning quite beautifully. The poem, “The Opposites Game,” arose out of a writing exercise for Constantine’s elementary school creative writing students at Windward School in Los Angeles, California. It is also a powerful look through the eyes of children about a perennial and perhaps…

OTHER VOICES: Grace Iwashita Taylor

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New Zealand’s Grace Iwashita-Taylor is a Shaper and a poet. She lives her life as a single mother, as a loving daughter trying to deal with the realities and challenges of her beloved mother’s decline into dementia and as a youth worker in a place that is one of the most expensive places to live on the planet. She is also an award-winning spoken word and published poet, playwright, and performer. The poet’s upu (words) circle around and around the…

OTHER VOICES: Joy Harjo

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Poet, artist and musician Joy Harjo is a member of the Mvkoke (Creek) Nation. (More usually, that word is spelled “Muscogee.”) Harjo became the first Native American to be appointed as a Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the American Library of Congress in 2019 by Librarian Carla Hayden. In case you didn’t know, the Library is America’s oldest federal cultural institution and is said to be the largest library in the world. As well as other things, national poets…

OTHER VOICES: Maya Angelou

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Maya Angelou’s life story always reminds me of a quote by William Blake that never fails to lend me heart when I’m feeling low: “No bird soars too high if it soars with its own wings.” The woman probably qualifies as a “force of nature.” What can you say about someone whose first autobiography, I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS, which was published in 1969 when she was 41, has gone through 154 editions so far?