Paige Ryan

The Day You Dried Oranges Because one day will be your last, and you'll be happy.

First time adding a recording of me reading a poem and it feels like a big deal??? Somehow more vulnerable than the poem itself?? Be kind 🙈😅

"Your Life in Parties" by Amber Sparks "...your retirement party, the one they threw for you at the atrocious Italian restaurant. Surprise!, they all yell, which is so awkward because this isn’t a surprise party...."

This story by @ambersparks.bsky.social is BRILLIANT. Sharp, witty lines that tug hard on a feeling, then abruptly cut it loose before moving on to the next. I’m not even mad about how it plays with my heart, because it’s a thrill—I’m feeling a hundred things at once—and I’m absolutely here for it.

POV: using poetry to trick yourself into feeling something other than what you’re actually feeling 😅

I Write Because I write because the world cracks me open

I love how a why can age—how you can look at it years later and see all it's been through.

Would love to connect with others on Substack. Read my latest post here and follow along for more:

substack.com/@paigeryan/n...

One could argue that the best part about writing is stumbling upon the past selves you’ve forgotten.

How to Steep a Winter Leaves of last year’s trees

In case the news is a little much, here’s a tender poem to read instead.

Fall in haiku.

People need to stop saying “I didn’t eat all day” as if it’s proof of work ethic.

It’s not ambition. It’s proof of a system that taught you to confuse self-neglect with dedication. And call it professionalism.

(Wild how eating lunch during the workday still feels like a rebellion.)

This addition to my dining room. Never underestimate the power of a cool light source.

“Never be sad when you can be funny instead—unless you can be funny and sad, which is even better. Slipping on a banana peel? Hilarious. Slipping on a banana peel while already downtrodden? Art.”

Finally, a sentiment I can get behind 😅

Death, dressed in its Sunday best. Painted in watercolor. Served almost sweet.

Jenny George’s collection stuns in its balance—heavy / light, above / below, grief / grace.

Words that have been marinated for 30+ years must be read! (Just ordered your book and am very much looking forward to reading it 🙃)

Cuuuute

lol this vibe is unmatched

The curse of being a poet is: every word is guilty until proven innocent 🤔 😅

Writing poems is just: uses word I’ve known forever → panics → googles definition.

The Good Whale This is the story of a wildly ambitious science experiment to return Keiko to the ocean — while the world watched. A new limited podcast series from Serial Productions and the New York Times.

I’m not sure where or if this fits within the defined categories but this was really engaging:

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Quite possibly my favorite philosophical question to date 😂

I am right there with you!

I picked strawberries last weekend, and halfway through the field—I had a moment.

Here’s a poem about remembering what joy tastes like 🍓

“…I eat another, then another, again and again, each more ferociously than the last…”

@rebeccasolnit.bsky.social thank you for this.

Picture of a page in a book that reads: They formed a group they named Common Ground and chose as their slogan "Solidarity not charity," a phrase inspired by the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano's statement "I don't believe in charity. I believe in solidarity. Charity is so vertical. It goes from the top to the bottom. Solidarity is horizontal. It respects the other person. I have a lot to learn from other people."

Picture of a page in a book that reads: “To put it more directly, what is mutual in mutual aid is not in the goods and services delivered; it's in the underlying belief in the deep connections between those who give and those who receive. It is a deep belief in and commitment to inseparability: that my well-being is inseparable from yours and that, in caring for yours, I care for myself and, more than that, for the larger whole that is us, because we are in this together. That is, we are not mutual because of the exchange of aid; we aid each other because we are already mutual. The word mutual is often used in this context to mean sym-metrical, as in a symmetrical exchange, a relationship of reciproc-ity, but mutual aid in the sense that ASS and Common Ground practice it isn't exactly this kind of mutual. It is more like the other meaning of the word what we have in common before and beyond exchange: mutual friends, mutual feelings, a mutual fate.”

Picture of a page in a book that reads: “This means recognizing the indirect, long-term, and incalculable benefits of actions. One source of my thinking is anthropologist David Graeber's writing on debt, in which he notes that the old idea was that traditional societies bartered, awkwardly, until money smoothed the transactions. He makes the case that, instead, goods and services circulated in complex ways that knit people together as a community; the transactions were never finished in the way that a cash transaction is, and neither were the relationships. Money is, in his telling, specifically a way to terminate a connection, while the other models of circulation strengthened and perpetuated the connections.”

Picture of a page in a book that reads: Organizations spring up suddenly—but, to use a fungal met-aphor, just as mushrooms are only the visible, fruiting bodies of the larger fungus that was long there, underground, so emergent disaster mutual aid often arises out of networks that have long ex-isted. In ordinary times, those organizations may exist for other reasons—as church groups or friendship networks; in extraordinary times, it turns out that the pleasure and leisure produced a safety net that can catch us when things fall apart. In those times of crisis, these networks often expand suddenly in ways that matter afterward. Other times, an emergent organization is like spores on the wind that may land in new places, sowing new life.

Rebecca Solnits “No Straight Road Takes You There” is currently keeping me sane.

Read for good perspective on solidarity, mutual aid, community, and pleasure/leisure’s ability to be a safety net.

Q: Would you explain something about your poetry? A: My poetry is something that happens throughout the day. When I water the vegetables or wash dishes, poetry is born in me. When I sit down at the writing table, all I do is deliver the poems. Poetry comes as an inspiration, and is the fruit of my mindful living. After a poem is born, I may realize that it helped me; the poem is like a "bell of mind-fulness." Sometimes you need to reread a poem you have written because it takes you back to a wonderful experience — it reminds you of the beauty available inside of you and all around you. So a poem is a flower you offer to the world, and at the same time, it is a bell of mindfulness for you to remember the presence of beauty in your daily life.

I don’t remember where I got this copy of a talk Thich Nhat Hanh did at a correctional institution but it’s full of nice little meditations on poetry and life.

You know a poetry book is good when…

Awe thank *you* traversing the forest of my words 🫶

A poem that reads: TO BE HEARD, ONE NEEDN'T MAKE A SOUND I am myself tree-like, the who of me a fist of wood and xylem. Did you know? If a girl falls in a forest and no one's around to hear it, her fingers pierce the soiled ground and keep growing. Years later, she's a woman [buried alive in dirt] and her favorite thing is to watch from her branches, the way the rain bleeds yellow with meadow pollen.

Retreating back to nature where the chaos of the world can’t get me.

Send me poems that ground—either ones you’ve read or written.

#poetrycommunity
#writingcommunity
#naturewriting

Yes, so true and me too! Do any come to mind that you’d recommend?