Poetry - John Paul Caponigro Art

I’ve written most of my life and studied writing in college, earning a BFA with a double major in art and literature. Writing about creativity and photography (technically and conceptually) for over twenty-five years, I grew increasingly hungry to express myself in other ways.

In 2019, during the first Youth Climate Strike, I saw a young poetess make a video presentation and have even more emotional impact than 45th vice-president Al Gore as he trained us to make effective presentations through his Climate Reality Leadership Corps. Her performance helped me understand that I didn’t need to change my social activism but rather intensify the ways my artworks are socially active.

In 2020 Covid-19 shut down my in-person digital printing workshop and made it possible for me to attend Richard Blanco’s chapbook workshop offered online the same week. I had a thirty-year bucket list item to write a series of love poems to the earth and I saw this as an opportunity to complete it. It became much more than that. I hadn’t planned to write a poem a day for a year – or be trained as a voice actor – but that is what happened. Poetry helped me survive and thrive during the Great Pause.

In 2021, after fifth inaugural poet Richard Blanco’s workshop, I learned the young woman who impressed me so much became the next inaugural poet Amanda Gorman.

Poetry has become a daily part of my spiritual practice and an integral part of the ecosystem of my creativity.

For me, the visual and the verbal are inseparable.

Whether visual or verbal, my passion is ecopoetry (making art as a way of understanding earth) and ekphrasis (making art as a way of understanding art),

though it may only be language itself that separates art from e art h

or nature nature from human nature.

View my TEDx and Google talks here.

Poetry & Creative Nonfiction

43
What’s Wild In You
Eco Theo
January, 2024

42
Licking Icebergs
Neologism
January, 2024

41
Rising
It’s Raining Birds
The Maine Standard
January, 2024

40
Robin”
Flash Frontier
December, 2023

39
Not It
Listen
The Shallow Tales Review
November, 2023

38
under a waking mind
Heliosparrow
November, 2023

37
Quiet
Listen
Duck
Listen
The Sandy River Review
November, 2023

36
new moon
searching frantically
Akitsu Quarterly
November, 2023

35
memories ripple
Tiny Wren Lit
The Half-Life Of Echoes Anthology
November 2023

34
the last persimmon
Presence
Issue 76
November 2023

33
Rocks
Listen
Strange Music
Listen
Steel Jackdaw #12
October, 2023

32
clock
Pebbles 3
September 2023

31
Polaris Australis
Listen
Kokako
Issue 39
September 2023

30
Looking At My Landscape
Listen
Landscapes Within Landscapes
Sordoni Gallery, Wilkes University
also included
poems – 30, 21, 19, 10
creative nonfiction – 16
May 2023

29
It’s Raining Birds
Still Points Quarterly
May 2023

28
How I Become A Place
Listen
I You They Us We
Listen
Spire
April 2023

27
Superman Has A Fortress Of Solitude In Antarctica
Listen
Indelible
April 2023

26
Invisible Deluge
Listen
Masque & Spectacle
March 2023

25
Morning Music
Listen
Sonic Boom
March 2023

24
Talk
Wild Roof Journal
March 2023

23
Haiku
snow drifts
Cold Moon Journal
January 2023

22
Haiku
hook cast through the air
Scarlet Dragonfly
January 2023

21
The Department Of The Interior
Listen
Tiger Moth Review
January 2023

20
Struck
Pass The Flame
Cathexis Northwest
December 2022

19
What I Do To The Earth I Do To Me
Listen
Little Blue Marble
Anthology 2022
December 2022

18
Eye
Listen
The Wild Word
December 2022