Welcome to SWWIM Every Day’s National Poetry Month project: Sing the Body: A Collection of Poems Praising Our Selves!
With support from Florida International University’s Wolfsonian Public Humanities Lab (WPHL) and Florida International University’s Center for Women and Gender Studies, we are publishing poems that celebrate body positivity and our selves.
In addition to publishing the poems as poems of the day, 10 select Sing the Body poems will be displayed on FIU’s main campus near mirrors and places where women encounter themselves. These poems will live in a dedicated portfolio on our website.
Thank you, as always, for reading and supporting SWWIM Every Day! Happy National Poetry Month!
1. I love the good days when I am braver than you think I look at how the rest of my body has grown into what is gone or grown around what was cut and now spends the rest of her scar-life learning how to transcend being an incision 2. the loving surgeon who cut out ⅜ of my left breast was so proud that there was no incision scar she blended her stitches along the circular route of my nipple fourteen years later my body holds the indentation of what was once a small breast and is now more like a dip or a not so deep crater on the planet of this petite and kind body that forgives and forgives any scalpel any forced opening because who of us when given the chance to heal would turn it down
Michele Kotler is a poet living in New York City, the city that birthed and raised her. She received her MFA in creative writing poetry from the University of Michigan after receiving her BA in creative writing poetry from Sarah Lawrence College. She is the founding director of the Community-Word Project, a teaching artist training and artist in the schools organization. On Wednesday mornings, you can find her generating work with the FLW (f**king lucky women).
**We do our best to preserve the integrity of each poem; however, due to programming limitations, some poems may read differently on a mobile phone and in certain browsers. For best viewing, use Chrome on a desktop/laptop.