From the vast sagebrush ocean to the majesty of the Sierra, the Silver State is a poem waiting to be written—again and again and again.
That’s why the Nevada Arts Council and Poet Laureate Gailmarie Pahmeier are inviting Nevadans to submit poems for Nevadan to Nevadan: What I Need to Tell You, the Nevada Poetry Project. Don’t panic; it’s as easy as writing a letter. (Remember those? They are like emails, but better.)
Luckily, all Nevadans are poets, Pahmeier said, even though they may not know it.
“I think the letter format helps with focusing your ideas,” she said. “What we’re asking is that people think about what it means to be a Nevadan and to tell others about that. Some (submissions) have been a single paragraph of imagery. Some rhyme, and some are metrical, but they don’t have to be traditional poems. The whole idea is to capture that authentic voice, that authentic vernacular, and to say something that matters to you.”
Some of the authors are budding bards, she said, while others have never attempted to pen a poem before and “have stepped out of their comfort zone” to try.
Some of the letters are addressed to family members or friends. Others are epistles to be sent to iconic Nevada places, people or events. Martin A. David penned an ode to the Silver State; James Barber celebrated Reno pizza; Hunter Gowins addressed his letter to Hot August Nights; and Juno Artley wrote her submission from the point of view of an alien who escaped from Area 51 and is describing our state to a friend on a distant planet.
Get creative, Pahmeier said: “What would Wendover Will say to Vegas Vic? What would Highway 50 want to explain to the Vegas Strip? What advice would Elko have for Carson City? If Pyramid Lake could write a letter to Lake Tahoe, what would that be like?”
Metaphors are marvelous. Similes are spectacular—but the most important thing is to be honest, she said. The poems can be serious or silly or sentimental. They may evoke sadness or laughter, longing or joy, Pahmeier said.
“Don’t worry about making a poem; don’t agonize over it,” she said. “This is a project about story, about individual voices woven into a larger tapestry. Just write honestly and use concrete details—observed and felt experiences.”
The poetry project’s website has some guidelines to help poets get started on their pieces. “Focus on your senses,” Pahmeier said. “If you are writing about Tonopah, tell us what you see, what it smells like, what you hear. If you set your poem in a Reno coffee shop, describe the patrons, what you see inside the shop and outside the window, what you taste. Everything is connected to your senses.”
So far, the letters submitted have ranged from verse that could make the grade for literary journals to “honest and sincere” epistles that celebrate Nevada’s people and places, she said. Some of the poems already submitted to the project can be read online.
“Don’t worry about making a poem; don’t agonize over it. This is a project about story, about individual voices woven into a larger tapestry. Just write honestly and use concrete details—observed and felt experiences.”
Gailmarie Pahmeier, Nevada poet laureate
The time period for the poems also is unlimited. Maddie McCalley, for example, wrote “Letter to Past Reno”: “When Virginia Street was the main street no one had dreamed of putting in a freeway yet / Campus was a mere five thousand students and everyone spent weekends pursuing Greek life regardless of if you had dreamt of being in a sorority or not / Ice cream cones to celebrate when the temperature finally hits 32 degrees as a high / Spaghetti in a bag on the way home from a late night in Virginia City / Handcuffed to a flagpole in a nightgown in front of Carson City / Flipping through yearbooks from the year 1969 … .”
Allyson Stronach set her time machine to a point in the more distant past in her poem, “Several billion golden years ago: This letter is to be hand canceled”: “We built fires and doctored the world with the sounds of our dancing / We scoured the stratified earth where we overlapped, and found stones that we fashioned into shrines for the demigods of our skeletons / There were mollusks and coral and fish teeth / And stars and craters and sandstone / And we were surprised when, time after time, the pieces tumbled together, finally at rest / Flecks of rhubarb and Alaskan Fireweed Alongside guitar strings and pixels and flattened pennies / We even strapped on roller skates and took the whole tapestry for a spin / And it blinked and twirled like a great constellation … .”
“Letter to Isaac From Tom” by Tom Yearnshaw begins: “We both found something in Nevada / About a hundred and thirty years apart / You passing through, a kid afoot with a wagon train / Me an adult driving a worn out car / What did we both see in Nevada / To bring us back this way / Or did the Sacramento Valley’s bustle/ Simply just not allow us to stay / You chose the promise of the Humboldt Sink / Nevada’s wide open spaces do have their allure / So does the green promise of water / Which drought will eventually cure / Just traveling Nevada’s back roads / Dried rivers, lakes, and streams / Foundation, chimney, and root cellar ghosts / Pay witness to Nevada’s broken dreams … .”
Pahmeier said the project will culminate with a staged poetry reading at an arts center next summer. In the meantime, all poems are welcome. There is no wrong way to write one.
“Most importantly, have some fun with this project,” she said. “It’s intended to be liberating, heartfelt and inclusive. Nevadans are writing to other Nevadans and specific Nevada communities, but perhaps we can speak beyond our borders and tell those outside of our state who we are and why we live and work here. Let’s get heard.”
To submit a poem, towww.nvartscouncil.org/nevada-poetry-project to see the guidelines and instructions on how to upload your poem. Galleries of the letter-poems already submitted are available on the site.