Poetry at Play
By Simon Hunt and Heather Lang-Cassera
Via the Humanities at Play virtual series, Nevada Humanities Program Manager Kathleen Kuo recently chatted with authors Simon Hunt and Heather Lang-Cassera about collaborative poetry. They explored the benefits and challenges of writing poems with other people. During the session, they compiled lines of verse from participants to create a collaborative poem!
Humanities at Play Live Stream Collaborative Poem
By Humanities at Play chat participants on August 8, 2023
Summer Friday night
extra-large taqueria Jamaica
car windows open
no particular destination
eastbound on Sahara
drifting out to sea
Taste the sun gold yellow melons of Fallon
Tarantula wine, melting desert ice cream
I would like to learn the taste of Nevada
Making my way across the Silver State like a Las Vegas buffet
The fires fall quiet
against the sunsets of yesterdays.
Ash has fallen around
Boulder City’s bighorn sheep,
gorgeous beasts I have, somehow,
never seen.
Cactus can be really tall
I was thirteen (Northern) when I learned this
I guess I knew their spikes could touch heaven
And strangely, I wanted to hug them
Lonely road climbs up out of Winnemucca
Like a black snake spiraling
Vast vista views of mountains Owyhee rising
the pale patches of white on the throat
in the sweltering summer
the changing august air breaths gently,
united at hand softly we walk through
the fields of change
Hiking a ski trail
In summer, breathing the mountain air
The sweet smells of the fauna carry with me
A bittersweet wish for winter to arrive.
The antelope’s black horns curving inward
The pale patches of white on the throat-
Nimble feet flee, bone glinting in the sun
To own a thing, and let it lie
Let’s return to sneezy trees
and a street that shares our name
in a valley where fleece blankets canopy your stroller on black asphalt
and we emerge|
behind a door fragrant
with newborn breath
My dad looked at the Hoover Dam
And though forty, he seemed like he was ten
I was in eighth grade
And this 'wall' was hellishly boring
Eerily straight stretches of asphalt
yet ever twisting with the waves of heat
long hours yet to go
the pedal continues to slip towards the floor
*****
They also shared an excerpt from a 100-stanza poem, which they wrote together by sending couplets back and forth until they reached 1,000 lines. Here's another excerpt, one of their favorite sections of the poem.
An Excerpt from Where Shadows Can Hold Steady
By Simon Hunt and Heather Lang-Cassera
Soft-spoken growls surround the winter wren
whose song floats better than she can, cascades
from heights then back again, descant response
to our low, unmitigated sighing,
reiterated prying for something
more than love. Here and now, these unquiet
susurrations stitch up our injuries.
Traced scars on both our bodies serve as maps
of happenstance, notes taken by quick, or
slow, days of chance. The smell of petrichor
is pet-name enough. This slow-speed chasing–
our thoughts concenter as our wrist-bones strain
and preserve our nap-time dreams which we try
to keep secret, sometimes even from our
own forgotten selves. Still in chorus, still
pokerfaced, we weigh anchor, place our bets,
witness old world sparrows parade beyond
the passerelle of green twigs which spring has
stage-managed once again. These rehearsals
distill the drama. Nutmeg’s earthy scent
only makes me want to go home again
to a place we cannot know–cinnamon,
interstitial, like the morning, cages
even as it protects our secret lungs.
Crumbs of air surround our futures, too young
to even know if they will exist. This
broken fast draws spirals from tomorrow
back through yesterday, linking each to each
other. Sometimes it takes the cold to know
we should slow down, imagine the clouds as
blankets heavy with the summer rain, sum
of all that falls, never ceases falling
for itself, or often no one. Somehow
we have both less and more control. Somehow
we begin again without having stopped.
Taking up a heart’s companion under
the fire-sun sky, a new canyon without
a river of clouds that cannot be held–
this is how we dissipate, spectral like
the Milky Way, wholly new, together.
*****
You can watch the Humanities at Play recording here in which Heather, Simon, and guests in the chat created this work of collaborative poetry.
Learn more about Humanities at Play and our streaming schedule here, see previous recordings of Humanities at Play streams on the Nevada Humanities YouTube channel, and create a free account to follow along with and participate in Humanities at Play on Twitch.
Simon Hunt lived and wrote in Las Vegas, Nevada, for three years before moving to Massachusetts. He has been a teacher for more than three decades, predominantly in California and at the high school level. He is the author of two collections of poems: Lesser Magi (2018) and Endlings (2023). Learn more about Simon and his poetry at simonhunt.my.canva.site.
Photo courtesy of Simon Hunt.
Heather Lang-Cassera is a full-time lecturer with Nevada State University, an editor with Tolsun Books, the poetry editor for Black Fox Literary Magazine, and a studio assistant with Clay Arts Vegas. She was a 2022 Nevada Arts Council Literary Arts Fellow and the 2019-2021 Clark County Poet Laureate. Learn more about Heather and her poetry at heatherlang.cassera.net.
Photo courtesy of Heather Lang-Cassera.