About our Poets:

Alan Harris writes poetry, short stories and plays. Harris received the John Clare Poetry Prize as well as the Tompkins Poetry Award from Wayne State University. He has published both Fall Ball, Poetry for the Late Innings and Hospice Bed Conversations with Finishing Line Press. Alan and his wife, Dorothy, reside in a quiet neighborhood in Grand Ledge.

Sandra Houghton Hudson is a semi-retired nurse, entrepreneur and former business owner. An artist, she enjoys dabbling in pottery and loves to travel. She has a life-long love of writing that continues to today. Much of what she writes comes from her own life experience. She cherishes most her role of wife, mother, grandmother and friend.

Peter Ruark first felt a calling to write poetry in high school and wrote in fits and starts in the decades that followed, but it was not until recent years that he began to make it a major part of his life. He regularly reads at Lansing Poetry Club events and participates in the Writing at the Ledges writers’ group. Among his favorite poets are Li Bai (Li Po), William Blake, W.H. Auden, Jane Hirshfield and Gary Snyder and Micheal O’Siadhail. He is in awe of poetry’s power to say what cannot otherwise be said and to speak directly to the intuition. He believes poetry is a way to communicate on a subconscious level and believes that if more people wrote, read and listened to poetry, the world would be a more peaceful place. Peter He writes in both free verse and structure and credits Auden with prompting him to write rhymed poems. 

Sarah Zwickle is a freelance writer, wife, and mother of two daughters. She grew up on a farm in Eastern Washington but left to play Division 1 basketball in San Francisco. After living in England, Seattle, the San Juan Islands, and Nebraska, she found her way back to the soil as a student of compost, growing food, and motherhood.

Cheryl Caesar As Associate Professor in the department of Writing, Rhetoric and Cultures at Michigan State University, I work to develop anti-racist and wellness-themed curricula for first-year writing students. I also work with the organizing committee of MSU’s twice-yearly First-Year Writing Conference. I lived in Paris for 25 years and earned my doctorate at the Sorbonne. I am fascinated by linguistic and cultural intersections. I am president of the Michigan College English Association, which offers a yearly Conference for teachers of writing. I publish poetry and artwork internationally and give readings and exhibitions locally. My chapbook Flatman: Poems of Protest in the Trump Era, is available from Amazon.

Becky Jensen: A poet and communications leader, Becky grew up in the Saginaw area. She is a life-long creative writer who is very active in the Lansing area poetry scene, has competed in slams in both Lansing and Detroit, and is a member of The Poetry Room board. She has written professionally for nearly three decades in various roles relating to higher education, radio, television news, commercial production, healthcare marketing, and fundraising just to name a few. During her time as a TV news producer, Becky won several awards for her work including an Emmy

What Are the Five Topics?

1. Children and their world:  How children changed me, the child in me, the scars of childhood.
2. The best of everyday memories—things that we remember that comfort us.
3. The Wages of ____ is?  What are the costs of things people pursue?  What prices do people pay for things.
4. Oddities and things that knock at midnight:  Things that seemed weird or off to you, things that fascinated you because they were different, people who gave you shivers
5.  Nature can be terrifying.  Times you’ve confronted a natural disaster, natural things that scared you, being lost in nature, dangers in water, etc.