30 Poems in November!

While summer and fall play tag with each other, it is difficult to think about November. However, the mid-autumn season of gratitude and poem-ing will soon be upon us.

Once again, I am taking up the challenge to write 30 Poems in November!  This is the major fundraiser for Center for New Americans were I teach English as a second language to adult immigrants and refugees. The event is community-based. Poets from 5 to 95 write poems everyday in November with others pledging their support for the writers. During December, there is a celebration at Smith College's Poetry Center, where poets read one of the poems they have written and attendees can sign up for copies of the anthology that is put together from poems written during November.

This year, I will be focusing my poems on the journey of the immigrants and refugees. I will write about their hopes, dreams, struggles, joys and pain.  I will write about my own family's journeys that make me a third generation American.

If you would like to support my efforts, go to: https://cnam.org/30poems.  Click on my name (Linda Rhinehart Neas) and follow the directions.  If you do not do online donations, you can mail a check to Center for New Americans, 42 Gothic Street, Northampton, MA 01060.  Put my name and 30 Poems in the Memo line of the check.

Thank you, in advance, for your support!  Here is a taste of what you will read during November:

LEXICON OF LIBERTY 
Dedicated to Nunnee with love

in a breath of arriving, 
necessities must be found - 
shelter, sustenance - 

dependent on employment, 
the language known, 
no longer comforts find

new words must form - 
quickly - 
training tongue and brain 
to utter imported intonations 
in order to succeed 

the beautiful melody 
of mother tongue 
replaced with whispers 

until triumphant 
determined decipherment 
brings freedom 

© 2016 Linda M. Rhinehart Neas