Mindful Poetry Moments Book Launch 2023 Recap!

This past Wednesday, August 9th, we held our fourth annual Mindful Poetry Moments book launch! For this year, we celebrated both in-person at The Mercantile Library in addition to streaming the event virtually for poetry enthusiasts to enjoy across the country.

The event kicked off at 6:00pm where guests, including the poets themselves, poetry enthusiasts, and The Well's great extended family, got the chance to enjoy refreshments and greet each other – some, for the first time in-person! At 6:30pm, The Well's Stacy Sims kicked off event, introducing this year's Mindful Poetry Moments co-curators: Cincinnati and Mercantile Library Poet Laureate, Yalie Saweda Kamara and Cincinnati's Inaugural Youth Poet Laureate, Rimel Kamran. The two set the tone for the event, with Yalie and Rimel respectively in-person and virtually described the theme, Our Stories, Our Narratives, while additionally describing their own story of embracing poetry and partipating as co-curators for this year's edition.

After our co-curators' introduction, we promptly went into the readings, hearing a wide selection of poetry from our in-person and virtual partipants written in response to this year's prompts. Poets of all ages from across the globe were able to read and share their work, all of which was streamed by The Mercantile Library to a virtual viewers in addition to the in-person listeners.

When all the readers concluded, we finally announced the curator for Mindful Poetry Moments 2024: Haleh Liza Gafori! Haleh Liza Gafori is a translator, vocalist, poet, and educator born in New York City of Iranian/Persian descent most recently known for her critically-aclaimed translations of the poet Rumi's work, GOLD.

We would like to thank everyone who made this book and this event possible – including our presenting partners, this year's co-curators, The Mercantile Library for hosting, all of the wonderful poets who participated this year, and many more. We're excited to give others a chance to pause and reflect on poetry's ability to encounter ourselves, the world, and the mystery of each other next year!

WATCH Readings HerePurchase Mindful Poetry Moments

Mindful Poetry Moments, incubated by The On Being Project, offers a chance to pause and reflect on poetry’s ability to encounter ourselves, the world, and the mystery of each other. This special collaboration began as a way to provide young students an opportunity to encounter poetry in the course of a normal school day during National Poetry Month and has expanded to reach poetry lovers of all ages. This year – with presenting partners The Hive, WordPlay, The Mercantile Library, and Puffin Foundation West – continued to meet this past April virtually in potent and nourishing hour-long sessions dedicated to meditation, a poem, and writing together.