MARBLEHEAD — Katie Rogers has been living in town for the past six years and is a wife and mother in the community. But, what she might be most known for is her poetry.
Recently winning two awards at the Marblehead Festival of Arts, Rogers said they made her feel more like a part of the community. “Mud Season” won first place in the Adult Poetry category and “Let Me Begin Again” won an honorable mention. Rogers admitted that “Let Me Begin Again,” which is printed at the end of this article, was her favorite.
After receiving her master’s in fine arts, Rogers worked as a teacher in New York City before moving to Marblehead and having children. Outside of her day job, Rogers has been teaching writing workshops to teens over the past three years at the Salem Athenaeum.
Rogers, who has been writing poetry since the eighth grade, started her Marblehead Poets group when she realized she missed being in the writing groups she had participated in before she became a mother. Rogers said the group’s members are diverse in age, background, and writing style.
She said that there are two short-story writers, a mixed-media artist who layers text into her art, and a math professor who writes poetry that is like mathematics.
“Each person is getting something different out of it and bringing something different to it,” Rogers said. “It’s really lovely to see.”
She said the group, which has been meeting once a month since December, has been successful because people are opening up to “kind criticism” to improve their work.
Rogers said that her two winning poems at the Festival of Arts had been shared with the poetry group and that the members’ feedback improved them.
“Getting feedback, even reading your writing out loud, you can see what is working and what is not, what has to go. You are out of your echo chamber,” Rogers said.
The participants allow themselves to be vulnerable, coming together for 90 minutes a month to show their souls, she said.
“We do our best writing and make our best work when we are a part of a community,” Rogers said. “We explore with other people and make it better.”
Rogers said her goals for the group are to have participants share openly, and to eventually hold a public reading. She said that the group could also create a literary magazine or zine.
She plans to continue writing and submitting works to literary journals.
“It’s life-affirming,” Rogers said. “I was a teacher that wrote poetry and now I am a poet that teaches and facilitates writing workshops.”
The Marblehead Poets’ next meeting is scheduled for Aug. 18 from 3:30 to 5 p.m. at the Marblehead Arts Association’s garden. The group is open to any writer, regardless of genre, from any community. Participants are encouraged to bring copies of works they want feedback on and anything that has been inspiring them lately.
Let Me Begin Again
after Levine and Jackson
Let me begin again as a sea witch — frothing ocean foam and form.
Let me grow not as grit in a clam to something small and shiny,
but as an infinite jellyfish — siphonophore — deadly colony.
The land has held me too long while I was young and holdable — I needed salting.
Let me rise like a gull or a cormorant. Diving then finding my perch
on a wet rock where I can open my wings to show the sun my majesty.
Twice I have been made to feel that I am but sand
and less than that even. Unwrap me and my hair will grow to the ground.
It will float around me as a coronation robe.
Now I return, for the first time, to the sea. Not to be extinguished
but to save myself. To inherit the waves that love me.
Do you see me way out here? I am not disappearing — you are.
