In April 2020, Poetry Month as always, Cincinnati’s past and current Poets Laureate, Pauletta Hansel and Manuel Iris, teamed up to offer a Cincinnati Poetry Month project intended help our poets document life during this spring when very little seemed “as always.” We invited all Cincinnati area poets to write and submit “Postcards from the Pandemic.” Pauletta’s poem, which appears at the bottom of the page, was offered as an example. Pauletta and Manuel selected poems submitted by our community to post daily in April on Pauletta’s Blog and in the Poet Laureate of Cincinnati Facebook Group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/1767490103507841/) from which they were widely shared. Manuel translated several of these short poems into his native Spanish, which we published alongside the English original. Below you may find links to all the published poems.
We hope this project will be of value in many ways—area poets will have the opportunity to write and share during Poetry Month; we will use poetry to connect with others in our community and beyond in this time of social distancing; and by recording our firsthand experiences through poetry, we will be creating a record of our community’s life in this historic time.
We also thank local publications CityBeat and Cincinnati Magazine for helping to spread the word!
Pauletta and Manuel
April 1 Erica Manto Paulson
April 2: Diana Becket and Jerry Judge
April 3: Richard Hague* and Pam Korte *
April 4: Karen George and Karen Novak
April 5: Ron Mohring and Rita Coleman
April 6: Rhonda Pettit and Jason Martin
April 7: David Petreman and Nicholas Korn
April 8: Abby Wheeler * and Madeleine Crouse
April 9: Nancy K. Jentsch and Barbara Lyghtel Rohrer
April 10: Brook Batch and John Cruze
April 11: Michael Maul, Chris Gutjahr, Jane Pugliana and Vickie Cimprich
April 12: Courtney Neltner Kleier, Jacqueline Johnson-Wilkinson (Gifted) and Lynn Robbins
April 13: Mark Flanigan, Joanne Greenway and Owen Cramer
April 14: Jacob Minasian, Christine Wilson and Anne Cahill
April 15: Karen Jaquish* and Susan Glassmeyer*
April 16: Nicholas Caudill, Ellen Austin-Li, Phebe Beiser and Zohreh Zand
April 17: Kris Gillis and Katelyn Weldon
April 18: MoPoetry Phillips, Carlos “El Principito” García León (in English and Spanish) and HIlda Weaver
April 19: Sara Moore Wagner, Lauren Magee and Annie Hinkle
April 20: Yana Keck, Jaisha Jansena, Judy Dominic and Kevin McHugh
April 21: Casey Harloe, Meridith Owensbey and Elaine Olund
April 22: Bea Wissel, Deborah Jordan and Chuck Stringer
April 23: Barbara Tonne* and Susan Scardina*
Aprl 24: Terri L. Alekzander, Gwyneth Stewart and Elissa Yancey
April 25: Annette Januzzi Wick, Teri Foltz and Ella Cather-Davis
April 26: Amanda McKenzie, Eric R. Eble, Nancy Watrous and Nathan Granger
April 27: Leslie Clark, Clarity Amrein, Rebecca Luce and Tonkia Bridges
April 28: Agnes Burdsall, Nancy Jones and Kathleen Spada
April 29: Dick Westheimer, Mary Nemeth, Helen Schwerling and Beth Smith
April 30: Roberta Schultz* and Sherry Cook Stanforth*
May 1: Manuel Iris* and Pauletta Hansel
*Translated into Spanish by Manuel Iris.
Pauletta Hansel 