With Ottawa Pops Orchestra’s Stories Through Music series, we are looking to build a community - one that can share perspectives, craft connections, and cultivate a greater understanding of different experiences in a time where unity is so necessary. Thanks for the write-up Apartment613!

A poem by Aracelis Girmay to take into the weekend, "Consider the Hands that Write this Letter" poetryfoundation.org/poems/56802/co…

I wrote my heart in a poem and it took up the whole bedroom it doesn’t pay rent it stays up watching cities burn to the ground I am so sorry that you have nowhere to sit I just loved someone —Hanif Abdurraqib

poems wil not return you, here—but they keep you alive, here —Henneh Kyereh Kwaku

A real privilege for me to play a part in getting the cohort together and I can’t wait to see what this brilliant group will accomplish!

The sentences and paragraphs you write that mean so much to you and nobody ever mentions them, perhaps they sense that language is somehow private, too hot to touch

"It seems the vast majority of our interactions with the things that fill our souls will continue to be on our laptops, rather than in person."

Moving words that can move mountains, move people, move progress. “The new dawn blooms as we free it. For there is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it. If only we’re brave enough to be it.” -Amanda Gorman

Not at my most chipper today. Here's a lovely, hopeful poem by Ellen Bass:

New technology is helping musicians play together virtually in real time - by eliminating lag time online bit.ly/3shr5QS

“The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don’t really want them to. But you’ll learn that you’ll survive them. ...If you’re lucky, you’ll have lots of scars from lots of love. And lots of shipwrecks.”

A lovely piece from Anne Michaels’s Correspondences for #WorldPoetryDay - “Not Our Memory of the Dead but What the Dead Remember” griffinpoetryprize.com/see-and-hear-p…

“There is value in choosing how to be seen, in reclaiming the right to select the face you show the world, in insisting that others see you as you know yourself to be,” Celeste Ng writes. Read her essay, and see more photos from the project. nyti.ms/31YdjaQ

Saul Bellow for your Monday evening: ✨

“People are not the worst moments of their lives.” There is more than that. So much more. So many more moments. “People are not the worst moments of their lives.”

A small section of a poem by Phillip B. Williams: “Final Poem for a King.” -from Mutiny

I am running into a new year like Lucille. 🖤

I have witnessed such great kindness as this, in this, my true life, you must believe me. I mean, on a Sunday, when nobody was supposed to be watching. Nobody at all. I saw this happen, the two of them hugging, when nobody was supposed to be watching, but not a secret either