by daithí
“Was a sunny day, not a cloud was in the sky….” Paul Simon
You couldn’t have asked for a better day. While beach goers were fanning their blankets on Lake Elmore, some of us were gathering at the Lake Elmore State Park Beach House.
The PSOV 2025 Summer Festival offered a dynamic duo: Kelsey Bigelow, a poet from Des Moines, and Caleb Rainey, poet and educator from Iowa City.
Kelsey offered those in attendance five tools to use while writing poetry: journaling (or free-write), going inward, staying outside, responding to a problem (answering a question), and erasure. We each got to pick two different tools over a 40-minute time span or staying with one. Following the writing time, those who wished to share, did so. There was an amazing array of topics, spanning from an iron hook that held up another iron bar in place to rescuing a fledgling in the midst of surging traffic–while texting with a family in Gaza.
Caleb “The Negro Artist” Rainey walked us through suggested steps to take if any of us wished to present our poetry to an audience: know the source of your poem–is it meant for stage? is the vocabulary accessible? Give yourself a week to walk and talk through the work, trying on different motions and voices, as well as varying levels of volume. Once you have finalized your voice, you should also hitch it to choreography. For the workshop, we practiced with individual poems. The most dramatic presentation was given by Maggie about a cat who was being belled for life. She was too good a mouser and birder!
Everyone sat around a table, ate lunch, and enjoyed each other’s company. We capped the day by open mic.
And we all went home satisfied.
