Celebratory Poetry Reading at Pen Arts

On a Saturday evening this past November, poets Joanna S. Lee and Cherrie Amour Woods read their poetry at Pen Arts in Washington, D.C. The event marked the first non-Pen Woman poetry competition hosted by the NLAPW in the greater Washington, D.C., Virginia, and Maryland areas. Lee and Woods were the winning poets and gave powerful, moving performances of their work.

President Sheila M. Byrnes opened the evening reading with a brief history of the Pen Arts building before giving the two winners their prize checks from the NLAPW. Second Vice President Nancy Dafoe introduced each poet, who read one after the other in the hourlong event.

Following the readings, everyone retired to the dining room for a repast.
Lee, current poet laureate for the city of Richmond, Virginia, is the author of “Dissections” (2017) and coeditor of the anthology “Lingering in the Margins” (2019). Her poetry has been published in JAMA, Rattle, Fourth River, and elsewhere, and has been nominated for both Pushcart and Best of the Net prizes.

Having earned her medical degree from the Medical College of Virginia and a master’s in neuroscience from William & Mary, she currently co-owns coffeeshop Café Zata in Richmond’s Manchester district. When she’s not slinging espresso or writing, you can find her training for marathons or hanging out with the newly formed Poets Who Run.

Lee has performed her work in venues from living rooms to conference halls to baseball stadiums. Her teaching repertoire centers around poetry and its role in healing. Recent projects include a Virginia-based anthology with Writing the Land and collaborative work with the Richmond Symphony. She is a founder of the River City Poets community and the Central Region vice president for the Poetry Society of Virginia.

Woods is a Baltimore-based spoken songs artist and award-winning poet and author who writes about love, life, and relationships. Her first book of poetry, “Free to Be Me, Poems on Love, Life and Relationships,” is a poetry memoir that details her life from childhood to adulthood and her geographic journey from the Caribbean to the United States.

Her poem, “Hermoso Negro,” a tribute to her father, is featured in the Paterson Literary Review. Her work has been published in Poet’s Ink, Understorey Magazine, Maryland in Poetry, and The Fire Inside: Collected Stories and Poems from Zora’s Den.
Woods is working on her second book of poetry, titled “Sit Comfortably Elsewhere.” Connect with her on Facebook, Instagram, and at cherrieamour.com.

We hope these two poets will join us as Pen Women. The NLAPW will be offering this competition again in two years and will widen the competition pool to the entire country for non-Pen Women poets, celebrating women in letters.

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A Change Has Come

I spoke with the elderly volunteer
At the railroad museum
At the Chesapeake Bay Resort
On a recent visit

I asked about one of the panels
On the upper wall of the museum
That said, Blacks could work on the railroad
But could not partake of its offerings until 1964

He shared that Chesapeake Bay
Had come a long way since then
And that he was happy for its integration
And he felt better about living there now

We learned that we were both poets
And that we had both been published
He shared that his latest piece
Was in the monthly local paper

I left the museum
And walked across the land
Back to the hotel
Where I had booked a room with a beautiful view of the bay

Thinking that before 1964
I would not have spoken to that elderly man
But I might have served him in some way
And perhaps said, “yes, Sir”

But now I can walk on the boardwalk
Eat at the restaurant
Book an appointment at the spa
And hope that more change will come.

– Cherrie Amour Woods

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To the Daughter I’ll Never Have

There were days I never thought of you,
whole stretches of hours I was happy finite.

Weeks I got lost just living. When I was your age,
I never thought in terms of legacy. And now,

what kind of world would I leave
as legacy for you?

There were other days, are other days still
when I miss the tininess of your hands,

get so angry I could punch the wall
thinking I’ll never have the chance

to hold you for the first time.
When I get lost in wondering

if you would have more red in your hair than I do
or the same crippling shyness. I don’t know

if introversion is inherited, but, baby girl
I would hope you’re not a talker

who doesn’t use her head. I would hope
you’re smart and sensitive—things my mother

might wish…but also ones I might have had hope
of passing on to you. Just as I would hope

that decades from now, maybe, we might sit
as women do and laugh over a glass of wine,

maybe on the moon, if there’s nothing left for us here.
But don’t grow up in a hurry. Someone

will always want something from you. Know its value
before you give it. Study your blue book

before you name its price.
I want to tell you to take the curves slow,

but my opinions won’t fit on the dash,
and without the thrill, there’s no point in the sports car,
anyway.

Without comparisons, we’d have no scale
with which to weigh ourselves out,

hand ourselves to another, sell ourselves to the world.
I never saw you made to be for sale.

Your hips and everything that pulses
between them belong to you and you alone.

There are whole universes in the dark cave
of your blood; call them forth if you want,

tuck them under your tongue on lonely days
and whistle the rain away.

I never could whistle. We always want better
for our children. I miss you, miss

like hell the star-charted possibility of you.
Buy the sports car, darling.
Find a desert road and drive through midnight,
just you and the sky.

– Joanna S. Lee