League of Minnesota Poets: Thawlight

The 2026 conference of the Minnesota League of Poets took place in Ely, Minnesota on April 10 & 11.  The theme is "Thawlight," a word invented by poet Amanda Bailey to signify the change from the winter cold that put our animals in hibernation and our trees on hold. The season is turning toward spring with melting of ice and snow, greening of fields, leaves emerging on the trees, and songbirds returning. It's like dawn, she said. A creative time.  

I hope my keynote address inspires poets to think of ways to tap into the power of changes, like the way a polliwog transforms into a frog or an egg hatches and the bird starts to fly.  I want to acknowledge and borrow the forces of change, the elements, and the mythic stories, folk tales, fairy tales, and creation stories. I want all of our imagination and music to flourish, I want poets to change the world. 

Usual and Impossible

 

TIME’S BODY by Brenda Hillman

—in the middle of the beginning they woke you
from a long sleep;

you could see the edges of the world
being formed, the boundaries
space would make in its eagerness
to be included.

The problem time would have
in its need to be the main thing.

The source of life is not life
but rebellion toward meaning.
When you saw the workers were already busy,

that the list you’d been handed
was usual and impossible

And held it all, and thin
or most, your will
strong as a paper clip

you needed a location
from which to act on your assigned nature

so you chose time:
seed of light,
seed of torment—

About poetry, Hillman writes: 

It is impossible to put boundaries on your words, even if you make a poem. Each word is a maze. So, you are full of desire to make a memorable thing and have the form be very dictated by some way that it has to be. But the poem itself is going to undo that intention. It’s almost like you’re knitting a sweater and something is unraveling it on the other end. – Brenda Hillman