#3: Capturing a moment

I often find myself writing simple poems in the morning, when the world is quiet still and I am orienting toward the day. It happens as I’m watching the sunrise, watching the birds, letting my mind wander, with my notebook open. It’s often in these quiet windows of my days that I feel the urge…

#2: Pleasures along the way

I think one of my biggest hurdles to my own production is the belief that poetry is complicated. I want to start this offering of prompts by proposing this question: What if it’s not? Perhaps poetry exists alongside us, whether we notice it or not. I wish I noticed it more. So here’s a prompt…

#1: An introduction

I offer this post as a sort of intention-setting moment, as I believe what I intend to do here is more noteworthy than who I am. I come to this position of writer-in-residence with an interest in engaging more deeply, both with myself and with this place I call home, Racine. I come with the…

OBSERVATIONS #20 – 12.31.24

Call – Last Theme of the Year Response – Thee Bunny Show, 2025 By – Mimi Peterson , WIR #17 Change is Coming – Details To Be Announced To the January-June, 2025 Racine Writer-in-Residence Grantee #18 – Congratulations! Best Wishes to our new WIR program coordinator! Formal announcements will be made shortly. In the meantime,…

OBSERVATIONS #19 – 12.31.24

Call – Color Feel, Theme of the Month Response – En Plein Air By – Mimi Peterson EN PLEIN AIRThe humid wind, sandy beaches, blinding light, hidden niches,Safeguards the children,Suspended between parched earth, blue sky, clear water, As if etched in steel, not real, tell time. Trace your way along the path, Through scrub, lost…

OBSERVATIONS #18 – 12.24.24

Call – Color Feel Response – I Must Do To Be By – Mimi Peterson I Must Do To Be I must do to be, Things move, change waits, Words interrupt, hands interpret, Bodies heal, thoughts roam. Before you, after me, Sands drift to form dunes and valleys, Swirling shapes shift with times motion, And…

OBSERVATIONS #17 – 12.15.24

Call – Color Feel, Theme of the Month Response – OBSERVATIONS Gathering By – Mimi Peterson In collaboration – Vintage and Modern Books, Art Root’s Writer-in-Residence Program, Vital Art Project and Mimi Peterson – devised the inaugural OBSERVATIONS Gathering held December 6, 2024, at V & M Books, 415 6th Street, Racine, WI. It had…

OBSERVATIONS #16 – 11.23.24

Call – Color Feel, Theme of the MonthResponse – My SpaceBy – Mimi Peterson My Space The sunlight is loud, It’s noise breaks the silence, Like a comforting blanket, Surrounds me, you, us, With both narrow and broad streams of brilliant sounds, Soon turn into murmurous shadows, At once dark and transparent, Casting familiar silhouettes,…

OBSERVATIONS #15 – 11.16.24

Call – Color Feel, Theme of the Month Response – Autumn Red By – Mimi Peterson AUTUMN RED Before hibernal cold, after vernal heat, as summer comes to close, More darkness than daylight soon will cover our planet host. Radiant leaves, ripe fruit, fall from trees. Celebrate! Rhythmic cycles of life to death, grow naturally…

OBSERVATIONS #14 – 11.10.24

Call – Color Feel, Theme of the Month Response – Cast A Net By – Mimi Peterson Cast A NetCast a net into the sky,Toss into the white not blue,Sky that feels like water looks.Cast a net into the sky,Casually pull apart its soft conceal,Uncover fields of pearlescent fluffs washed in light.Cast a net into…