Have you ever wondered why the word “poetry” is used to bestow such high praise–so that the work of a brilliant chef or architect or filmmaker is called “poetic” or “poetry in motion,” even by people who would never be caught dead at a poetry reading? No other art besides poetry has had such a mythology attached to its sources

Annie Finch writing in Maine. Photographed with a box camera by Doug Bruns First published in A Poet's Craft: A Comprehensive Guide to Making and Sharing Your Poetry (University of Michigan Press, 2013) "No ideas but in things," admonished William Carlos Williams in the most famous statement on poetics of the twentieth century. His remark summed up the credo of the

“We really need to do something about publishing.” — Audre Lorde   Recently on a women poets online discussion group, the young poetry editor of an online magazine wrote that she is dismayed how few submissions she receives from women. Then she posted a general invitation for the group to send in poems. Someone commented, “Why not solicit women poets

Note: this piece was originally published in Her Circle Ezine in 2011. Since that link is no longer live and the issues persist, I’m posting it here as well. —AF Finally, VIDA has published the numbers.   What many of us have long known, or at least suspected, is now incontrovertible truth: women are not published nearly as much as men

How wonderful that Linda Ashok has edited a volume of Best Indian Poetry, modeled on the Best American Poetry Series! Welcome, and wishing long life to the series. This looks like a truly fascinating collection.

The beautiful words you will read below arose in the consciousness of participants in my recent writing workshop at the Garrison Institute. The workshop was based on Five Directions, my system of creative, psychological, and spiritual growth through rhythmical writing. Each of the brief passages here offers a glimpse into one moment of our weekend-long journey through different language rhythms,

    Part 2 of Tony Gatlif’s 3 part film series about the Roma people, Latcho Drom, is one of the most moving films I’ve ever seen. This mesmerizing and subtle mistresspiece of documentary filmmaking has moved into my Lifelong Top 5.  It shows us so much about how humanity can be—and, as seems pretty clear from the film’s tragic

THE SEAFARER From the Anglo-Saxon, c. 550-950 AD   I keep the track                          of a song true of me: I’ll tell of trials,                           struggling times, hard days,                   

Originally published as an appendix to Among the Goddesses: An Epic Libretto in Seven Dreams, an epic poem about abortion by Annie Finch (Red Hen Press, 2010)  This ritual can be done alone or with any or all members of the family or community affected by your abortion–the people that the baby might have known. I developed it for myself and my

In the last several years, I have become intimate with what Elizabeth Bishop called “the art of losing.”  I have lost a job, health, financial stability, and my lifetime’s literary archive (85 cartons of papers, sold to the Beinecke Library). I lost my mother to memory loss and then death—and in the surrounding family chaos, I lost closeness with siblings

This is the multi-layered, reflecting view on the last night before leaving our little apartment in Portland’s Old Port for DC–and on the eve of the subtle and strange pagan holiday called Imbolc. Imbolc marks the first stirring of life, literally meaning “in the belly,” since in the Celtic year this is when ewes become pregnant. But, especially in Maine,

I have always loved and admired the work of psychologist Harriet Lerner. Her books The Dance of Anger and The Dance of Intimacy were key in helping me get into adulthood sane. But honestly, this little essay on the importance of the word VULVA is likely the most helpful thing I’ve ever read by her. I found it on the

Heading to Haystack tomorrow for the 9th annual Architecture, Culture, and Spirituality Forum. I’m honored to have been asked to be poet in residence and to perform a keynote poetry reading and ritual at Stonington Opera House on Wednesday night. Will take the occasion to weave together sacred time and space for this group and, by extension, for all of

When my mother‘s mother was a baby, she attended the ceremony unveiling the Brooklyn Bridge and was carried across the bridge in her father’s arms. That’s only one reason I am so thrilled to be joining the new low-residency MFA program at St. Francis College in Brooklyn Heights, just across that same bridge from Manhattan. It’s the first low-res program in NYC

This is one of my favorite and most challenging times of the year.  Here on the coast of Maine, the snow is still fairly clean on the ground, but the air is biting and it seems like a long long time since the earth was alive.  And like many people I know, I’ve been struggling with fear and disbelief, with many

I’m posting this stunning poem in memory of the poet and writer Judith Ortiz Cofer, who died on December 30. Quinceañera BY JUDITH ORTIZ COFER My dolls have been put away like dead children in a chest I will carry with me when I marry. I reach under my skirt to feel a satin slip bought for this day. It

  About a decade ago, I found myself in need of making a serious apology—the kind of apology where a lot hangs in the balance. I made my apologies over and over, but none of them worked; the hurt feelings lingered on. It was a wake up call. For the first time in my life, I realized that apologizing is

  I have always felt a kinship with this poem, as I think many women do, because it illuminates the power of the secrets so many of us have felt we had to keep within.  And now in the wake of writing this post about silence and breaking silence about sexual abuse, it means even more to me.  How heartbreaking to think of

Last year I attended a large women’s event: an herbal festival held at a rented summer camp. On the first night, one of the owners of the establishment welcomed the crowd of about 600 women. “Are there any guys in the house?” he asked, almost immediately. He was greeted by a sea of women’s laughter: there were no guys in

  When I was about ten, in the 60s when the draft was a big thing, I remember getting in a big argument with my father, Henry L. Finch, about drafting women. I told him that if men were being drafted I thought women should be drafted too—it was only fair. A pacifist who had been a conscientious objector in

CHOICE WORDS: WRITERS ON ABORTION, edited by Annie Finch, seeks ideas, suggestions, and contributions.  Excerpts from fiction, nonfiction, poems, and alternative texts such as letters or journals will all be considered. As well as offering your own work, prospective contributors are urged to “sponsor” a piece of writing: share a few words to introduce a piece  from another writer, either from the past (all centuries) or

    I am so sorry for the recent loss of Kate Light to breast cancer.  Kate was a professional violinist as well as  poet, a bright sprite of a soul, and a lovely poet.  I met Kate through Molly Peacock and, as women formalists in days when there were very few of us, we bonded and shared some good times

  Swinburne is a poet I have loved dearly since I first discovered his sapphics as a teenager—still some of my favorite sapphics of all time.  On a visceral level, I find him cathartic.  One of the prized possessions in my poetry library is a rare six-volume set of his complete works.   I found it on sale in a little bookstore in New Orleans one

I have been traveling in Iceland this week and having my mind quietly blown by a landscape so full of fire and ice and sea, size and solitude and surprise, that it just carves me out as a glacier carves a landscape, leaving space for new wonder.  This is the country that decided not to build a road in 2014

It’s National Poem in your Pocket Day. For over a decade, the Academy of American Poets has been encouraging all of us to carry a poem in our pockets on April 30 and share it with people we meet, in honor of the last day of National Poetry Month. And to make it easier, the AAP has even helpfully provided

I am beyond excited that  my anthology Measure for Measure: An Anthology of Poetic Meters, edited  with Alexandra Oliver, is now out in the Everymans Library series from Random House.  This book has been a twenty-year project of mine that has gone through two previous aborted coeditorships, and I’m so glad that Alexandra Oliver finally came along and helped me make it real.  The

On Nov 29, I issued the “Ferguson Ballad Challenge” to express my solidarity with Shannon Barber’s concern that The Paris Review chose to publish the poem it did under the title “The Ballad of Ferguson, Missouri.” The good news is that titles can’t be copyrighted and the field for the real ballad of Ferguson, the one that will illuminate and motivate and

If a poet believes in the “channel” model of the self, there is almost a mandate to do everything you can to develop yourself as much as possible, so you can do as good a job channeling your muse as you can. This is the way I’ve always looked at it. To me it’s sort of like the way I

I LOVE starting things–doing things for the very first time.  Footprints in virgin snow.  The first page of a new journal.  Building American Witch  over the last year or two has had many great parts, and some challenges–but one of the most reliably great parts has been getting to start so many things, from bank accounts to social media accounts.

This post was first published at the Poetry Foundation website, www.poetryfoundation.org “It is easy to be a poet, / brim with transparent water….” Carolyn Kizer’s book Mermaids in the Basement was open on the table before me. But I recited the lines from memory as I scanned the familiar yet strange face, so close to mine, for any sign that their author

Each year around this time, as I travel through neighborhoods and visit friends, I notice the many wreaths adorning walls and lampposts and, especially, festooning doorways and windows. These images of wreaths hold a powerful meaning of beginnings for me — and also of mystery. I think it started back when my brilliant friend Cara told me that she had

Robert Bly’s selection for the Poetry Society of America’s Frost Medal is well-deserved and long-overdue.  Bly’s influence on contemporary poetry, with his translations, anthologies, and his spiritual and archetypal aesthetic, culminating in the Deep Image School of poetry, has been so pervasive and prolific as to actually become somewhat invisible. Publishing the historic journals the Fifties, the Sixties, and the Seventies, to

The new Alhambra Poetry Calendar is out, and Glen pointed out this morning that my remote ancestor Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, and I are both included.  This is, as far as I know, the first time we’ve ever appeared in an anthology together.  I feel she is smiling on me.  I feel it like a warmth over my shoulder,

Josh Davis, my former student and dear friend and poet, sent me this report from a recent Ani DiFranco concert in Saratoga, CA: “Toward the end of the show and between songs, Ani read a new poem.  Here are the lines I remember:     Give the witches back their brooms     Give the weavers back their looms……            

  The original American Witch blog began on Yule 2010 over at blogspot.  Then it moved briefly to Tumblr, but in the process I lost a lot of my old followers.  Some readers have asked me to please bring the original blog back, and I miss it too–we had a very nice community there 5611

I’m getting ready to head out to the annual retreat of the Black Earth Institute, where I have the honor of being a Senior Fellow this year.  It’s always an extraordinarily inspiring weekend, with powerful presentations by Fellows on their work in progress, hard-hitting and urgent conversations, and, not least, memorable wine from BEI founder Patricia Monaghan‘s homegrown organic grapes.  How fitting

Photo by Georgia Etheridge     Happy Lammas, All!  Here is an excerpt from the lammas chant from my book Calendars.  Though it says two voices, we performed it the other day in four groups of voices, just moving through the poem three times, and it worked out great.  If I can get the technology down, I’ll also add the audio version

I picked up a copy of an odd book at a library sale over the holiday weekend: Ethel Morton at Chautauqua, by Mabell S.C. Smith, published just about a century ago, in 1915. It’s an eye-opener to see what things were considered wild and modern at that time:  not only airplanes and electric lights, but also learning to swim, kids earning

I write this from the sidelines of one of the final rehearsals of my play Wolf Song, which premieres next week.  The deer chorus is singing, “deep inside the belly of the wolf/where the dark growls begin. . .” It’s mindblowing to be watching even just a small segment of the crew of creative people—director, composer, musicians, maskmaker, puppetteers, choreographer,

  For any students out there who might want to find out the answers to questions like these, here are my answers to Kailee’s questions for her English class… Hello Annie,My name is Kailee H. I live in Hiawatha, KS and I’m a junior in High School. Our english teacher wanted us to do research on a famous poet that

Here is a guest post I wrote for Ruth Ellen Kocher’s blog Aboutaword, which I wanted to share also with readers of American Witch. My book  Among the Goddesses: An Epic Libretto in Seven Dreams came out recently and now I am doing readings and a blog-tour about the book–(there’s even a Facebook group started by the press where you

Snow still on the ground here after a white April Fools Day surprise, but thank the goddess I just came across these heartening and very witchy early spring recipes at Thea’s Kitchen.  

So this is it, the first day of the ninth and last wave of the Mayan Calendar, known as the time of universal consciousness, the beginning of the age of love and the end of separation.  Brooke Medicine Eagle has good insights about these times in her series of videos.Till 6 pm today, EST, there is a “synchronized global breathing event”

Last year, it was the Valentine Ball.  This year, we had too much else going on–travelling, Glen’s job interviews, and what not–to throw a party.  We decided to stay home (and the world threw us a valentine party, the demonstrations for freedom in Egypt rocking my heart; check out this video~!) Usually I write a valentine for Glen every year.  

Late last spring, the outlier veteran formalist poet Lewis Turco dropped me an email out of the blue, asking if I’d be interested in writing a poem in an ancient Celtic form called a “Rionnard Tri-Nard.”  Generally, an email like this is about the most fun thing I can imagine receiving, so I was prone to say yes, even before

What a special, special Solstice night.  My daughter and I, in rooms at two ends of the house, were both awakened at around 2:40 AM (just as, it turns out, the eclipse was heading into its fullness) by what seems to have been an identical feeling:  a warm rush of happiness entering through the crowns of our heads.  I lay

  My husband Glen, an environmental activist who often sends me wonderful links, forwarded this story on wind power in a medieval Italian town.  I find this, and so many massive changes in energy technology that are currently underway, moving metaphorically, spiritually, and practically–embodied transformation, magick at work to bring us closer to living in harmonious respect and stewardship of the natural

Time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future: check out this version of “A Man’s a Man for A’ That” by the Scottish singer Paolo Nutini.  

  “Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages” —Chaucer     This morning, the Maine Marathon was going by just up the street, and when I saw all the activity, the cars parked all up and down our normally rather quiet block and so many people rushing by with their kids and rattles to cheer the runners on, I felt compelled

–I am excited to be judging the first Wild Weeds Poetry Contest in honor of Susun Weed’s seven favorite weeds.  I am a serious fan of Susun’s work.  My physical health and overall vibrancy in life has been vastly improved by drinking nettle and other infusions as she taught me. My sense of commitment and community as a poet has been charged

\ (thanks to the great Lemon Hound blog for photo!) A couple of years ago, I was on the way to New York and poet Lee Ann Brown happened to mention that she’d enjoyed the Louise Bourgeois Retrospective at the Whitney.  I had heard legends about Bourgeois’ salon, and sculptor Judy Fox had been meaning to bring me over, but

    One of the jolting pleasures of being a publishing poet in the age of the Web is to stumble on a poem that has gone on adventures without my knowledge. The Niches section of my website collects links to poems I’ve come across on, among other places, a Spelunking site and a Wine-tasting site.     But recently I had

I have been decorating the house like mad, since tonight Glen and I are hosting a Valentine’s Ball. The decor involves silky sari cloth in rich colors, little silken nooks out of pre-Raphealite paintings, sparkling lights and votives, big sparkly red hearts. There is something extremely liberating about all this, sobering in light of the fact that in some places

The timing was perfect. Just on Robbie Burns’ birthday, a lovely little package arrived from a small town in Scotland–the “Scottish lace panel” I had ordered from Ebay to filter the glare in my writing studio window. It’s replete with red deer, Edinburgh Castle, and the word “Scotland” facing four different directions. What more could a Scottish American poet want?

I am dubbing this once in a blue moon full moon New Year–which begins with ten-foot tall blue people with tails (as Mihku calls them!) saving their planet from techno-military-industrialization with arrows–the New Year of the Arrow.     Inside me and in those around me, I am finding strengthened clarity of purpose and claiming of agency as 2010 begins to