Since moving back to Racine as an adult, I occasionally find myself in a place I recognize from the past, greeting me in a new way. This was the case when I recently found myself utilizing the Perry Ave. post office for the first time as an adult. I pulled up and instantly recognized the…
#6: Poetry of a day
I’m making a more conscious effort to notice the good things in my days, the things that make me smile or stand out as uniquely beautiful, amidst the routine and the expected. Often, these things are small: a good night’s sleep, a fresh cup of coffee, animal tracks in the snow, a kind interaction at…
#5: Noticing light
I love winter, but I always find myself forgetting how hard the season can feel. Grey days stretching on. Cold keeping people inside and isolated. But every now and then we get a blue sky day. The sun makes its way through the clouds and down to us. The morning light from the east warms…
#4: It’s February
I think the month gets cast in a bad light. Winter lingers on, the holiday season is essentially over. We’re all back to work, solidly into a new year, finding ourselves in rhythms again, whether we like it or not. At this time of year, Racine is somewhere between the bitterest cold and hints of…
#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…
