It's Poetry at Work Day 2024!

I had lunch with a friend and former colleague last week. We hadn’t worked together since 2015, and I hadn’t seen her since 2018. But we were Facebook friends, and in the intervening years stayed aware of families and careers.  

While we talked, I was reminded of a year in both of our lives, and the lives of some 23 other colleagues. From 2008 to 2009, the group of us were part of something not seen before and never seen again in our company – the almost overnight creation of a 25-person department focused on new technologies, straightforward communications with employees, and dealing in a new way with issues (of which there were a multitude) besetting the company.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Realism in Modern Art – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Poetry Prompt: Journeys! Or…Veni, Vidi, Vici – L.L. Barkat at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

Boxing – poem by Zack Eswine at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

The Kingdom of the Hwicce – Annie Whitehead at Casting light upon the shadow. 

Some Tuesday Readings

Poetry at Work Day! – Tuesday, January 9, 2024 – Tweetspeak Poetry. 

Things Worth Remembering: A Grave You Have in the Clouds – Douglas Murray at The Free Press. 

 

Against All Earthly Fire – poem by Leland James at Society of Classical Poets. 

 

Writing a Poem: Where to Begin – Jody Lee Colins at Poetry & Made Things. 

 

A Plea for the Second Verse of “O Come All Ye Faithful” – Stephen Presley at Institute for Faith, Work, & Economics.

 

Paying Attention – poem by Andrew Peterson at Rabbit Room Poetry. 

It’s Poetry at Work Day 2023!

In 2014, I hit a wall at work. I was marginalized. I was being paid for work far below my experience and capabilities. Wanting to get up in the morning was increasingly problematic. I made attempts to move to other positions, including one major attempt, but the job was handed off to someone who was a problem in an unrelated division whom they need to move somewhere. The individual was told to come to me for guidance and mentoring.  

It wasn’t the first wall I’d ever encountered in my career, but it was the last one. In the early fall, I told my boss I was retiring in May. Surprisingly, to me at least, the news was not received well. It wasn’t that I was irreplaceable in my job; the work was easy and unchallenging. I never learned why my boss and others were so upset.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Tuesday, Jan. 11: It’s Poetry at Work Day 2022!

It’s Poetry at Work Day, and I find myself thinking about names in the workplace.   

I’ve been long fascinated with the names of characters in the works of Charles Dickens. Many of them are descriptive of the characters they represent. Some he made up out of whole cloth. And some were borrowed, or stolen, from the names of real people. “Pickwick,” for example, came from the name of the owner of a coach firm in Bath. “Oliver Twiste” was the name of a real person. Dickens borrowed, and sometimes barely disguised, the names of friends, acquaintances, neighbors, and people mentioned in newspapers. 

 

The names of these characters often contain their own poetry. While reading a paper from 1917 on the origins of the names of Dickens’s characters, I began to think about the names, and the poetry of names, of people I’ve known over more than four decades of work life. My own last name likely started life a millennium or two ago to differentiate a father from a son, or an older and younger brother. 

To continue reading, please see me post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Looking for Workplace Wisdom: It’s Poetry at Work Day 2020

It’s Poetry at Work Day 2020, and I went looking for wisdom literature about work. Many of us have had experiences with works, jobs, employment, and bosses that might make us doubt if the word “wisdom” even belongs in the same sentence with “work.” And while we all have stories to tell, it’s clear that wisdom can be found in the workplace. One of the best pieces of advice I was given as a developing corporate speechwriter was to read the poetry of T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, and Dylan Thomas. These three high priests of modernist poetry offered more than their profound poetic insights and how things could be said in a speech; they offered a way of looking at and understanding the world. 

My search took me to lists of great books about business and work. Fortune has a list. CNBC has a list. Amazon has a book about the top 100 business books of all time. Bloggers have lists. I found almost as many lists of best business books as I did books. 

To continue reading, please see my post at Tweetspeak Poetry. 

It’s Poetry at Work Day – Discovering the Poetry of Gratitude

Today we celebrate Poetry at Work Day – the day each year we bring poems to work, share them with colleagues, read them aloud in small (or large) groups, perhaps leave a few on cafeteria tables, wallpaper them on our computer screens, and generally celebrate poetry in the workplace.

Last spring, I found myself rediscovering poetry at work. And rediscovering a sense of gratitude about work.

Three years previously, I had retired (a bit early). It was one of those “You know, it’s just time to go” kind of decisions. I still had much to offer, but, well, I’ll just leave it at that. It was time to go. I can truthfully say I have never regretted the decision. I miss the people I worked with, but I didn’t miss the organizational politics, the constant internal upheavals, and the frenzied “every day a new crisis” atmosphere. And I put my newly found free time to good use – writing, including two novels; editing; work with online publications; and spending more time with the grandchildren.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Your Work is Poetry: Poetry at Work Day 2018

Today is Poetry at Work Day 2018.

Most poets have day jobs. They must. Very few poets, no matter how good they are, no matter how much their words may leave us struck with wonder, can make a living solely by writing poetry.

Walt Whitman, for example, struggled financially for most of his life. He was a printer, a teacher, a journalist, a newspaper publisher, and a clerk in the Department of Interior in Washington. Maya Angelou was a dancer, a songwriter, a singer, a historian, a civil rights activist, a producer, and a director. Wallace Stevens and Edgar Lee Masters were both attorneys. William Carlos Williams was a doctor. Marianne Moore was a teacher and editor. T.S. Eliot was a banker and an editor. Robert Frost was a teacher, cobbler, and editor.

To continue reading, please see my post today at TweetspeakPoetry.

Poster photograph by Sonia Joie. Used with permission.

It’s Poetry at Work Day 2017! Join with Us to Celebrate!

It’s Poetry at Work Day 2017.

And I have a confession.

This is now the fourth year that Tweetspeak Poetry has sponsored Poetry at Work Day. I’ve written about it and celebrated it. I wrote a book called Poetry at Work.

My confession: associating poetry with work still sounds strange to me.

The first connection between poetry and work was made for me. I was part of the speechwriting team at my company, and a friend gave me three poetry collections, “You can’t write speeches unless you know T.S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, and Wallace Stevens,” he said. These three great modern poets helped shape not only poetry and literature but also speechwriting.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Celebrate! It’s Poetry at Work Day 2016!

Unexpectedly, I found Poetry at Work.

I was sitting in a meeting, one of those interminable, stifling meetings that recurred weekly, a regular meeting that had to be attended. It didn’t matter that each meeting repeated its predecessor, that 90 minutes was set aside for what could be covered in less than 90 seconds.

Attendance was required. Suggesting an alternative (like meeting annually) or skipping the meeting altogether was unthinkable; the fate of global capitalism hinged on seven people sitting in a small conference room every week and boring themselves.

Discussion was repetitious. Differences were repetitious. Even the occasional conflicts were repetitious.

And then one day, as I desperately tried to stifle a yawn, I heard it. I heard it in the repetition.

The language had a cadence and rhythm. It actually had a kind of music.

It was poetry at work.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.