Portsmouth's Poet Laureate Verse Lifts Beleaguered City's Spirits

The New York Times finds out more about Portsmouth, New Hampshire Poet Laureate Tammi J. Truax's weekly contributions to the city's Covid-19 newsletter. "Ms. Truax, an elementary school librarian who lives in Eliot, Maine, just across the Piscataqua River from Portsmouth, said that she thought of poetry 'as a healing power,'" writes Johnny Diaz. More: 

“I think connecting to a poem because you connect to the feeling is what makes poetry powerful,” she said.

“The poems are an unexpected bright light from City Hall,” Anne Weidman, a 63-year-old Portsmouth resident, said on Friday. “The poems add a human voice to the sometimes depressing lists of food resources, government-assistance links, mask-wearing protocols and health statistics. They are a Sunday feature, and it’s a day that I always make it a point to click and read the advisory.”

So far, Ms. Truax has contributed 17 poems to the newsletter. The shortest was a haiku, a traditional Japanese three-line poem; the longest was 31 lines of free verse.

Learn more at the New York Times.