Past Poet Laureates

Janet E. Aalfs

Poet Laureate of Northampton 2003-2005

Janet E. Aalfs, poet laureate emeritus of Northampton, MA (2003-2005) and 7th degree black belt, is the founder & director of Lotus Peace Arts.

Integrative arts community educator and performer, founding member of Valley Women’s Martial Arts, a non-profit school in Easthampton, and the National Women's Martial Arts Federation, she has shared her work at conferences and events around the world for more than 35 years.

Aalfs has been a Dodge Festival poet, a presenter at Split This Rock, a feature performer at Power of Words/ Goddard College and Po'Jazz/ Hudson Valley Writers Center, an AWP poet, a Mass Poetry Festival performer/workshop facilitator, and a cultural exchange artist in Cape Town, South Africa.

In 2013, she received the UMass Center for Women & Community Leadership and Advocacy in the Arts Award, and was inducted into the Modern Arnis Hall of Fame in Philadelphia. She was named one of 125 Alumni to Watch by UMass in 1988, and received the Woman of Distinction Award from the Girl Scouts of Western MA in 1996. Aalfs has an MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence.

Her most recent collection of poems is Bird of a Thousand Eyes (Levellers). Other books include Reach (Perugia); Full Open (Orogeny); Of Angels and Survivors (Two Herons); Lubec Tides, a finalist in the 2007 Bright Hill Literary Center Chapbook Contest; Red and several self-published chapbooks. Her writing has appeared in numerous anthologies, journals, and online sites including A Fierce Brightness: 25 Years of Women's Poetry; Crossing Paths; Martial Arts Teachers on Teaching; Women in the Martial Arts; Contempory American Voices; VerseWrights; California State Poetry Quarterly; Monthly Review; Onion River Review; Comstock Review; The Mindfulness Bell; Passager; Sinister Wisdom; Common Lives/ Lesbian Lives; Feminists Who Changed America, 1963-1975. She won first prize in poetry contests of the Boston Herald and Peregrine Journal, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. The anthology, No, Achilles (Waterwood 2015), will include her poem, “Sonnet for the Stolen Girls.”

Poet Laureate 2003-2005 Community Projects: Janet E. Aalfs

Readings/ Performances, Keynotes, and Workshops

• *Poet Laureate Inaugural Reading – 6/24/03

• Flag Day Poetry for Peace Reading – 6/14/03

• Northampton Community Music Center – 7/1/03

• workshop on tai chi, music and poetry performance

• National Women's Martial Arts Federation, Ohio – 7/18/03

• “Special Training” martial arts and poetry performance

• Hampshire County Jail Poetry Workshops – Aug-Dec 2003

• Benefit Reading for Nicaraguan artists, Ashfield – 8/16/03

• *Community Arts Meeting reading – 9/16/03

• Hampshire Regional High School – Sept 2003-Mar 2004

After School Program for Girls, Weekly Workshops

• Smith Vocational High School Keynote – 9/25/03

• Care Center Conference Keynote, Holyoke – 9/26/03

• Everywoman's Center Staff Conference Keynote, UMass – 10/8/03

• Valley Women's Martial Arts “Hats Off” Benefit Auction – 11/1/03

• Jackson Street elementary school workshops Nov. 3 & 17, 2003

• Pride & Joy reading – 11/5/03

• Northwest District Attorney Domestic Violence Task Force Meeting – 11/20/03

• Everywoman's Center Survivors Support Group, Amherst – 12/8/03

• First Night Northampton readings – 12/31/03

• *Mayoral Inauguration reading – 1/5/04

• Pride & Joy reading – 1/27/04

• Ludlow Writing Workshop Graduation reading – 3/16/04

• Sabes Literacy Conference Keynote, Holyoke Community College – 3/19/04

• Northampton High School Poetry Slam – Mar 19, 22, 23, 2004

• performances, coaching, judging

• Northampton Community Music Center Multi-Arts performance – 3/28/04

• Meekins Library reading, Williamsburg – 3/31/04

• Hampshire County Jail reading – 4/7/04

• Hunger Benefit “Taste of the Nation” reading – 4/28/04

• Springfield Library Poetry Contest reading – 4/25/04

• Kendal Retirement Community Lyceum, Ithaca, NY – 5/6/04

• International Language Institute workshop – 5/10/04

• Ryan Road elementary school workshops 5/11/04

• Boston Herald 1st place Poetry Contest Reading – 5/27/04

• *Northampton's 350th Anniversary Celebration reading – 6/5/04

• Common School workshop & performance – 7/23/04, 2/7/05

• ARISE Tent City workshop – 7/27/04

• *Arts Council Transperformance reading – 8/24/04

• Springfield College Orientation performance – 9/5/04

• *Smith College Convocation reading (350th anniversary poem) – 9/6/04

• Amherst Books Reading, Old Crow Journal – 4/10/05

• UMass dance & poetry workshop at VWMA – 4/29/05

*arts council/ city events

Ode to the Many Voices of Northampton

On the Occasion of the City’s 350th Anniversary, 2004

Crickets through my window, prisms
and a whining saw, sparrows
in a tangle of brambles.
What moves, lives.
What lives, sings.
Children on bikes circle
the block, voices spinning
Spanish and English like spokes
of the same wheel.

The street forks and the full moon
seen and unseen, pearl and coal,
perches in the cleft of an elm
where an old man used to stash
peanuts for the squirrels.
I trim the bittersweet remembering
he offered me his long-handled clippers.

On a breeze the tinge
of barbeque smoke, a saxophone
unwinds tendrils of the blues.
Around the corner the sun
warms a copper beech
then slips away. Someone
kneels in the garden.
Sparks still whisper in the grass.
Sally Maminash was not the last
shimmer of Algonquian here.

and the drum awakens
and the light arcs
and the bells chime

A crow flies west
over goldenrod and crimson-
tinted maples, sumac thick,
barbed wire coils of the jail glinting
near Hospital Hill. Over the Mill River,
over the flat roofs of brick factories
the loud bird soars.

In a clearing the statue
of Sojourner Truth, shadows
and light, branches, wings
swirl in a chorus
around her, heart true
as the print of a leaf,
and the lost voices rise
through sidewalk cracks and broken glass.
They are not finished
calling, echoes
like fish swimming under ice.

Though his fingers burn
cold, a boy picks up his flute
and plays a lullaby.
A prisoner writes a poem
and her life opens
and the gate slams.
Sun shouts in the darkest cell
What sings, moves,
What moves, lives.

At the courthouse citizens
bang on pots and pans, flash signs.
Candles flicker in the freezing wind.
Flags wave, opinions clash.

Listen to the ground.
A root splits stone. Love frees
the calm, the storm. I’m whole
again in her embrace.
Wake up, move, though the body aches.
Wake up, sing, though salt stings
the throat, the eyes. Hearts broken
beat tender, wild.
and the shofar sounds
and the choir swells
and the Koran’s chanted
and the gong calls forth
and the grove shimmers
and the Oxbow ripples
and the lone coyote
lifts its trill to the sky

As crocuses open
and the swans return, the long
tidal river floods its banks.

Connecticut. Named in a language
fragile, tenacious, memory fractured
as the land. We are fed
as its currents and fields
are fed, held as the hills
and mountains hold
the sky. Here I offer
my one voice
as I am blessed by the many,
dissonant, harmonious as a riot
of crows, distinct
and blurred, breath
by breath, bold, reticent,
aching to unfold.

Through streets and byways,
archways, courtyards, doors
flung wide to the wind,
thistle howls
redwings blaze
corn shivers
thunder quakes
calling me out
into the bluster and raw
scent of rain, starlings
and gulls wheeling toward the river,
lightning in their wings.

— Janet E. Aalfs

Note: “Ode to the Many Voices of Northampton” has been published under the title “What Lives, Sings” in Bird of a Thousand Eyes, Janet E. Aalfs (Levellers Press, 2010) and Paradise Found: A Walking and Biking Tour of Northampton, MA through Poetry and Art (Levellers Press).

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