A recollection of a kind thing said

And the making of a map of memory

Dear friends,

I am writing this on May 1st — May Day, not to be confused with mayday, which has entirely different connotations. Happy May Day to you, friends. And, for those of you who are in mayday, may days be better for you.

Thank you for your glorious replies to last week’s question about being fully alive. I have tuned into the comments a few times this week to read the continued conversation.

Tulips in the grotto of the University of Notre Dame, April 2026. Photo by Pádraig Ó Tuama

A few weeks ago, while speaking at the University of Notre Dame’s Raclin Murphy Museum, I was kindly invited by the University’s Institute of Social Concerns to offer a class to women in a nearby jail. I was pleased to. In the class, I offered a prompt that I’ve done a few times before and was moved by the replies.

The prompt is this: What’s something nice that someone said to you?

You don’t have to think of a hierarchy of the most beautiful thing anyone ever said to you in your life. Just something nice.

And then, populate that sentence with the environment within which it happened: Where were you? What time of day or night was it? Were you inside or outside? What could you see, feel, smell, hear, or taste? What were you wearing? (if anything!) What happened right before the nice thing being said? What happened right after? What, or who, else was in the room? What thought occurred to you, perhaps unbidden? What was the light doing? Or the dark?

That’s the question this week, by the way: Respond to the prompt above, write a poem, and share it in the comments.

In the jail, we took about 10 minutes to write, and then a few more minutes to edit and arrange things. The nice thing doesn’t have to be right at the start or at the end. The idea is that to write a poem about a single thing, you can also use the single thing — the nice thing you heard — as a way of looking, a way of observing.

I know I’m a tired record, but the Irish word for “poet” is “file” (pronounced like fill-a), which shares etymology with the Irish verb for seeing. To poem is to see. Or, to use more accessible language, to perceive. The arrangement of the objects or the description of the details forms a kind of map of a phenomenon. Especially if you don’t try to force poem-y metaphor into the objects and observations — just let us be with you in the experience.

My advice is to take the nice thing you remember and then free-write for 10 minutes, populating a page with everything that comes to mind in the environmental prompts that surround the event. And then to choose from your free-write 9, 10, or 11 lines that you think work, and make this the shape of your poem. Nothing too long, no need to tell us what it means, or to push any metaphor or simile. The event itself is enough; the map of the place where the nice thing happened is a poem, whether the place was nice or not.

In the jail, the observations were moving and memorable: how the light during a conversation shone on prison scrubs making the ugly colour look nice; how the brown eyes of a friend’s teary smile makes more teary smiles occur; how the memory of a warm word is a comfort in sleepless nights; how the sound of a bird outside a window made a poet think of the colour red or maybe yellow. The room was generous, specific, supportive, funny, interrupting, engaging, intelligent, articulate, critical, and unforgettable. The poems were fantastic. I hope to find ways to get permission to share some of them.

Speaking of poems, I’ll look forward to reading yours, friends.

PS: My old friend Jonny Clark is now presenting The Corrymeela Podcast, featuring conversations with peacemakers about how they use their courage, language, and action for social change. You can find it wherever you subscribe to podcasts, or you can listen to it online here.

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Poetry in the World

A list of my events: Online and in the U.S. (Manhattan and Rhinebeck, NY; Santa Fe, NM) and Scotland (Iona)

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May 11, Manhattan, New York

For those of you in New York City: Join poet, playwright, and actress Amanda Quaid and myself for a live recording of Poetry Unbound In Conversation at The Morgan Library & Museum, beginning at 6 p.m. (For more info, click on the date heading.)

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May 31–June 5, Rhinebeck, New York

I’m leading a six-day workshop at the Omega Institute. We’ll read and examine poems and also write and discuss our own. I’d love to see you there. (For more info, click on the date heading.) And if you can’t join it, you might enjoy Orion’s Environmental Writers’ Workshop, taught by a team that includes past Poetry Unbound poet Michael Kleber-Diggs. Learn more about the Environmental Writers’ Workshop — which takes place at Omega from June 14–19 — here.

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June 27–July 3, Iona, Scotland

Krista and I will be leading a week of conversation (with some musical guests) on Iona, an island off an island off the west coast of Scotland. It is filled, but if you want to be on the wait list, you can email the Saint Columba hotel by clicking on the title just above here. (For more info, click on the date heading.)

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August 9–13, Santa Fe, New Mexico

I’m leading a four-day intensive workshop at Modern Elder Academy called “Poetry as a Common Language”. We’ll read, write, and discuss poems on finding and deepening connection. (For more information, click on the date heading.)

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October 13, Online

I’ll be leading a virtual craft intensive on poetry and desire through Poets House, beginning at 6 p.m. ET. (For more info, click on the date heading.)