As my tenure as Writer-in-Residence draws near its end, I’ve been looking back through the posts from these past 6 months. It was good to take the time to put some of my thoughts, opinions, and recommendations into writing. The first April where I was a writer, I joined an Instagram “challenge” my friend Esteban Colon was also doing. The idea was to write a poem every day in April for National Poetry Month. I think that month really pushed me to discover a bit of “my voice” as a poet.

Over the course of that month, there were often days, especially a few weeks in, where I wasn’t sure where to start and I’d pick a form like a random recipe from a cookbook or a lawn care flyer from the daily junk mail in the mailbox, and other times I’d simply write with no restrictions. It was an excuse to experiment, and it broadened my thinking and writing a lot.

This past 6 months has been a similar experience. Aside from these blog posts where I was challenged to write out some of my ideas in a concrete way, there was also the writing in public. There were a lot of poems I wrote which I haven’t shared here. One of the ideas I played around with quite a bit, especially while at Vintage & Modern Books, was taking a book and using 1-4 sequential words from the top line of each page. I tried this with “God Emperor of Dune,” “Thieves’ World,” some of Sartre’s writings, “RV Vacations for Dummies,” “Cast Iron Cooking for Dummies,” Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” and others. I found it really interesting how each resultant poem really kept the flavor of the book/author’s writing, but was still often a usually meaningless piece of interesting new literature. The one that really didn’t work was the Sartre stuff. I think his philosophical writings are just so dense, and of a certain type of difficult language, that the results were just similarly dense conglomerations of words.

Anyway, my point was simply that it has been fulfilling and challenging to maintain the posts and writing in public (where I’m admittedly sometimes a bit distracted!) I met new people, developed better ties with others, and I’m grateful to have had the opportunity.

I’ll be making one more farewell post next week, welcoming in our new incoming Writer-in-Residence and talking about upcoming projects I have in the works for the near/ongoing future! In the meantime, here are some short poems I wrote earlier this month:

Woodland Pattern

Whipped wool
Oodles tap pattern
Return
Root waffle planned
Lantern drone
Pollution nectar
Noodle dance
Wild lichen
Wetland siren sapling
Centered on subwoofer

Untitled

Too island for rainy
Passing style for a time
At around darkened is plain
Morning hours told called off

What’s rooted in founding
Isolated drastic protrusions
Plastic love manufactured
For songsters

Strangers to rough craft
Caught wild pliable
Minor shifted
For mirrored moons

Untitled II

Squid strikes
Overt mission sing-songs
Placard pointed Ferrari
Fixer adjusting fondant
For sixteen last half
Humble velocity

Untitled III

Delight mind moving
Through birds in the avenue
WInds stong sense
Mincing questioned
Curly across horizons
Spilled for decidedly
Copper kettle blues babies

There is a runestone swapmeet
A dry spell in the corn fields
There are dancers in the minefields
There is a dice game in Bryon Cherry’s notebook*
Don’t swallow these words if you want to live
All across the neighborhood
People sing from their windows
Swing songs as medicine
For isolated times

* This is a reference to Bryon Cherry’s poem, “Versace, Versace, Versace” which is a favorite of mine.

Jay Mollerskov, ArtRoot Writer-in-Residence 6/19/26