On place
And being in place
Dear friends,
Yesterday, I met a friend in a café off Amsterdam Avenue on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. There were many people on computers and others playing games (it’s stocked with shelves of board games). I got there early but couldn’t find a table. While I was ordering, a man came up and said, “By the time your tea is made, I’ll be gone.” Sure enough, as the tea was nearing its requisite five minutes, he passed me by, put his hand on my shoulder, and said, “Table’s yours brother.”
The pillars in the café are covered with Post-it notes, some with insider jokes about Settlers of Catan (I’m not a player, evidenced by the fact that I initially spelt “Catan” with a K). However, one note caught my eye: I Love this Place. After an hour with my friend in Chaotic Good and some delicious turmeric chai tea, I do too.
Then, my friend and I went to meet some others in another favourite haunt around the corner, The Dead Poet (though neither expiration nor inspiration are entry requirements). Some pints of stout later, I felt the call of nature. Sure enough, in the tiny wardrobe-sized bathroom, someone else had left the same message: I 🖤 this place. (The bar, presumably, not the water closet.)
Many years ago, I was on the phone to a friend while walking around West Belfast. On a wall leading into a residential street was written “I hate this street”. I wondered who’d written it. I believed them; I hope they found a way to activate whatever would help.
And then — how could she not? — Jane Mead came to mind. In the first poem of her first book (always a curiosity of mine), she writes:
I come here every day to be beneath this bridge, to sit beside this river, so I must have seen the way the clouds just slide under the rusty arch— without snagging on the bolts, how they are borne along on the dark water— I must have noticed their fluent speed and also how that tattered blue T-shirt remains snagged on the crown of the mostly sunk dead tree despite the current’s constant pulling.
From “Concerning that Prayer I Cannot Make” in To the Wren by Alice James Books, the full collected edition of poems by Jane Mead (1958-2019)
I love this poem for many reasons, one of which is how the speaker’s particular crisis is voiced. In my reading, the poem is an exploration of What do I do after I’ve managed to stay alive? It is one thing to survive a terrible thing; it is another to know what to do the next day. One doesn’t always make the other easier.
And so, she gives us a poem of an ordinary place, somewhere that brings the industrial borderlands of a city to mind: bridges, rivers, arches, bolts, vegetation that both grows and return to the soil, some rubbish, and also (later) the pale sunlight on the reflective frost. It’s extraordinary. It’s not an I hate this place poem, and while it’s not an I love this place poem either, it’s not quite not. The place she goes is the place she goes. And she brings us with her. I praise that edge of whatever city it was.
That’s my question to you today: What is the place you go to? Not because it’s aesthetically worthy or anything, but just because you go there. Don’t tell us why you go or what it means; just describe it. What do you actually see there?
When I was younger, I regularly walked to the estuary near my parents’ house. If the tide was out, it was smelly, salty mudflats, with the sound of curlews and herons amidst listing, small boats. If it was winter, there’d be lights from the village on the other side of the inlet. If the tide was in, there’d be small waves. Once, they were large enough to soak me, and I loved the feeling. These days, I walk the river northwards on the west side of Manhattan, the Lordly Hudson to my left and then New Jersey. The sky above. Concrete on the ground. Also: dogshit, grass, things that people dropped — receipts and notes and an occasional wallet.
I’ll see you in the comments.
PS: Friends, I’ve been presenting The Corrymeela Podcast for the last few years, and there are five episodes being released this autumn. I’ve loved presenting it (ably guided by the phenomenal producer Emily Rawling). Find it wherever you podcast your podcasts, or go to corrymeela.org/podcast
PPS: Throughout the fall, Blue Flower Arts is hosting a series of digital workshops with a stellar set of writers — Keetje Kuipers, Safia Elhillo, Chen Chen, Mahogany L. Browne, and Haleh Liza Gafori. You can sign up and purchase access to any of them here.
PPPS: My good friend Marie Howe is teaching a workshop in Asheville, NC, called “Out of the Depths: Writing Prayer”. The workshop is from May 4–8, 2026, and registration closes on December 7, 2025. You can find all the details here.
Poetry in the World
A list of my events: Online and in the US (Manhattan and Kingston, NY; Princeton, NJ; Swarthmore, PA; Atlanta, GA; Cleveland, OH; Portland, OR; North Kingstown, RI; Chicago, IL; Cambridge and Stockbridge, MA; Notre Dame, IN) and the UK (Iona, Scotland)
October 8, State College, PA
Join me for a reading at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church on the 8th of October at 7:00 P.M. More information about the free event can be found here.
October 9, Princeton, New Jersey
Come find me at The Farminary at 8 p.m. for a reading and book signing. You can buy tickets here.
October 10, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania
I’ll be discussing “Poetry and Openness” with Megan McFayden-Mungall, Isadora Caldas, and Vivian Ojo at the 2025 Annual Conference of the Peace and Justice Studies Association at Swarthmore College. You can purchase tickets for the conference here.
October 12–18, Online
I’ll be participating in the 2025 Collective Trauma Summit. Registration for the free digital conference can be found here.
October 15, Manhattan, New York
Join me for a lecture alongside Episcopal Bishop Marianne Budde at St. Thomas Church. You can register for this free event here.
October 18, Atlanta, Georgia
I’m leading a retreat day called “Poetry, Prayer, and Place” at The Cathedral of St. Philip. Learn more about the retreat and register here. Tickets at reduced rates are available.
October 20, Online
Poet Philip Metres and I are having a virtual interactive session as part of the Catholic Nonviolence Initiative Series at 7 p.m ET. You can register for this free digital event here.
November 6, Cleveland, Ohio
I’ll be visiting Case Western Reserve University to have a conversation with Michele Tracy Berger. Registration details can be found here.
November 8, Portland, Oregon
Come say hello to me at the Portland Book Festival. For pass information and the complete author lineup, check out the festival’s website.
November 14, North Kingstown, Rhode Island
Together with Sophie Cabot Black, I’ll be reading as part of Spencer Reece’s “14 Gold Street Series”. Turn up — it’s free, it’s at 5:30 p.m., and the location is here.
December 1, Cambridge, Massachusetts
I’m delighted to be reading with Martín Espada at the Blacksmith House Poetry Series at 8 p.m. Admission is $5 and can be paid at the door; you can find more info here.
December 5–7, Manhattan, New York
I’m thrilled to be part of the Irish Poetry Festival at the Irish Arts Center; I’ll be doing two events: one paid and one free. Tickets and full details here.
December 11, Chicago, Illinois
I’m honored to be reading alongside E. Ethelbert Miller at the 27th Annual Peace Concert. Learn more about the free event and get a ticket here.
December 19–21, Stockbridge, Massachusetts
I’m leading a retreat called “Poetry of Peace” at the Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health. More details and registration here.
February 26–March 1, Kingston, New York
I’m leading a weekend retreat workshop called “Poems of Longing”. For booking information and more about the program, visit the Hutton Brickyards website.
April 23, Notre Dame, Indiana
I’ll be giving the keynote for a symposium at the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art. Event details here.
June 27–July 3, 2026, 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. The Saint Columba hotel will be releasing information about it soon; sign up to that list here.
Each morning, usually at around 6:00 am, I sit on a gray chair at our dining room table with a cup of fresh brewed coffee. I am looking eastward. The orange sky and silhouette of dark trees greets me through the four casement windows in our living room; I also see two cars and a van in my neighbors driveway across the street. My favorite coffee mug (a treasured gift finely crafted by my best friend) and my bowl of cereal sit atop our wooden dining room table. Our table was custom built to fit proportionally in our small dinette off the kitchen. I just like this table and appreciate the craftsmanship of those who built it. It’s one of those happy purchases. I now feel settled and go to that place inside myself.
The place I go to is a spit of loose sedimentary rock, pudding-stone, that splits the air and water between two beaches. I scramble down to it from the ragged grass and purple clover of the machair, or at low tide step to it carefully across bladder-wrack and pools with hermit crabs and slow-scrawling winkles. There’s the pipe from the sewage station. At the juncture between its outflow and the free water you can see a tiny fountain bubbling when the tide comes in just so. There’s the fuaran, the iron-tasting algae-crusted bowl of fresh water filtered through the rock, where we used to slurp when we were children. There are the nests of the fulmars. There’s the sulphur stink of rotting seaweed. There’s the cardboard cut-out mountains on the horizon, across the sea, and the herring gulls flying.