{"id":6634,"date":"2022-05-11T13:29:56","date_gmt":"2022-05-11T17:29:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nhwritersproject.org\/?p=6634"},"modified":"2022-05-11T13:29:56","modified_gmt":"2022-05-11T17:29:56","slug":"granite-state-poetry-nh-poet-laureate-alexandria-peary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nhwritersproject.org\/granite-state-poetry-nh-poet-laureate-alexandria-peary\/","title":{"rendered":"Granite State Poetry – NH Poet Laureate, Alexandria Peary"},"content":{"rendered":"

By BEVERLY STODDART, A NH Writer\u2019s Life<\/h3>\n
\"Alexandria<\/a>
photo Courtesy of Jane Button Photography<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As New Hampshire Poet Laureate, Alexandria Peary \u201cserves as an ambassador for all poets in New Hampshire and works to heighten the visibility and value of poetry in the state.\u201d I contend she is perfect for the role. Let\u2019s start with, she is funny. I found this as I read her latest book,\u00a0Battle of Silicon Valley at Daybreak.<\/em>\u00a0Her creative mind gives us a poem where emojis are at war and are battling. It is creative and sweeps the reader up into the story of their lives.<\/p>\n

Alexandria is a professor at Salem State University, teaching courses in poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and mindful writing. She shares with us how she helps undergraduate students grasp how we are intermeshed and how to be comfortable with ourselves and stay in the present moment. Check out her TEDx talk,\u00a0How Mindfulness Can Transform the Way You Write,<\/em>\u00a0on YouTube for a deeper look at the concept.<\/p>\n

Frankly, you don\u2019t make money writing and publishing poetry. You do it because you need, love, want, and have to write it. The state chose well when they picked Alexandria for the honored position of poet laureate.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t be afraid. She makes poetry approachable. \u201cBe patient with yourself,\u201d as she urges us to read poetry. I find poetry is a search for those lines you find that you can\u2019t live without. Give her poetry a read. You may find a gem of a line you, too, can\u2019t live without.<\/p>\n

Beverly: I want to start with what poetry is to you.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alexandria:<\/strong> \u201cPoetry is the language of the internal mind. We think in fragments, and it\u2019s connected to a greater whole. It\u2019s fleeting, a briefer reading experience than prose. For some, it\u2019s almost a form of religion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beverly:\u00a0 You are the poet laureate for New Hampshire. Would you tell us what that means?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alexandria:<\/strong> \u201cIt\u2019s a tremendous opportunity. In academia, service-learning is a teaching practice in which students exit the classroom and do work in the world, community work. As a professor who is a first-generation college grad, I sometimes find conventional academia to be rarefied and disconnected from people. My dissertation was on Peter Elbow\u2019s\u00a0Writing Without Teachers\u00a0<\/em>and focused on the \u201cextra-curriculum of composition,\u201d or writing experiences larger than a classroom, a semester, or a grade. I want to support other people\u2019s writing because my father didn\u2019t have a chance at a college education, likely because of an undiagnosed learning difference. As an immigrant from a country recovering from war, my mother didn\u2019t even have the chance to graduate from high school. So as a mindful writing expert and as state poet laureate, I\u2019m active in the community supporting other people and their writing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beverly: Where are you from?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alexandria<\/strong>: \u201cMaine, but my mother is German, and my father was American. It pained me to see people who couldn\u2019t have confidence in their self-expression, as in my mother\u2019s case, to express or get a formal education to express artistically. She is a still-life painter. I\u2019m in love with writing. I\u2019m in love with my writing. I\u2019m in love with your writing. The reason why is that I just feel writing is such an important component of life. One doesn\u2019t need to be a poet professionally. It\u2019s important for everyone who wants to write to have confidence, to not lug around a stone backpack of doubt and wishing to write all their lives. As the poet laureate, I focus on the whole writing process, from writer\u2019s block to helping people start to building opportunities to publish and enjoy a public presentation for their work. I love this community service aspect.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beverly: It\u2019s a great position in the state that is so recognized. I\u2019m thrilled for you.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alexandria:<\/strong> \u201cI think New Hampshire residents are extremely blessed for a state with a relatively low population, more trees, and streams than traffic lights and sidewalks. Every week, every day practically, so much is scheduled in the state in terms of writing workshops, groups, readings, and celebrations. During the pandemic, all sorts of opportunities blossomed thanks to the miracle people-connector of Zoom. We\u2019ve been able to hold readings and events in the North Country without driving three hours, for instance. Truly in this state, we could benefit from an index of all the available writing events because the Granite State is creatively gifted and blessed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beverly: How do we pull all of that together? I would like to have that on the NH Writers\u2019 Project website.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alexandria<\/strong>: \u201cThat would be a good idea\u2014maybe pull it off through an email chain or Twitter feed. Have a hashtag. Reach out to people like me, to writers and organizers, and we would each reach out to two other people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beverly: I listened to Krista Tippett, The On Being Project, and a poet on there said, \u201ca poet trains us to hear what we haven\u2019t heard before.\u201d How should a person listen to a poem?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alexandria: <\/strong>\u201cBe patient with yourself. Poems are not straightforward prose\u2014it\u2019s more like the language behind the language, sort of indirect or at-a-slant language. It\u2019s almost like hearing someone speaking English when it\u2019s not quite English. I tell my students to trust their instincts. We\u2019re trained to think we\u2019re not good enough as readers or writers of poetry. What\u2019s your emotional, physical, embodied reaction to what we\u2019re about to read? What does it remind you outside of the classroom? Listen to your embodied and personal responses. When I listen to a poem, especially if I\u2019m hearing it and don\u2019t see it on the page, I ask myself afterward what lingers, what persists, what might I remember about this poem twenty minutes from now in my busy life? What\u2019s the poem\u2019s core? Most of all, trust your reactions and responses. Trust you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beverly: As you say that, I thought of one of your poems. The poem,\u00a0Sonnet Branches,\u00a0<\/em>reads: The forearm of spring rests on the windowsill to the kitchen where I\u2019m boiling opera for pasta.\u201d You\u2019re boiling opera for pasta? What is the meaning of that?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alexandria<\/strong>: \u201cThe gesture behind that line is the blending of the senses, synesthesia. You don\u2019t boil opera: well, maybe sometimes I do\u2026 It\u2019s sort of like Miles Davis hearing the color blue. I\u2019m interested in synesthesia because we too frequently relegate experiences to compression categories. There\u2019s much more we know without realizing we know. That line in \u201cSonnet Branches\u201d sprung from a Japanese novelist named Haruki Murakami. At the beginning of\u00a0The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle,<\/em>\u00a0the protagonist is making pasta and listening to classical music when a woman he doesn\u2019t know cold call phones him, and further interpersonal and intrapersonal strangeness ensues. I was thinking of Murakami and the mysteriousness that happened after that fictional phone call.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bev: I was listening to On Being about poems and God. How do poems relate to God or religion to you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alexandria:<\/strong> \u201cI\u2019m a mindful practitioner. I guess if I had to say if I worshipped anything, it\u2019s the unconscious paired with the present moment. That pairing opens us to the much vaster forces all around us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beverly: Is that an inner voice you\u2019re listening to?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alexandria: \u201cIt\u2019s also preverbal and nonverbal. It\u2019s a lot of stuff sensed that\u2019s not language. It can be a voice. From a Buddhist perspective, everything is intertwined. It\u2019s very intertextual, one piece of writing affecting another piece of writing, and everybody is intermeshed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI teach mindful writing at Salem State University in Massachusetts, undergraduate and graduate students. This semester, we were trying to understand Thich Nhat Hanh\u2019s concept of\u00a0interbeing.\u00a0<\/em>It\u2019s so hard for me to help students reach an understanding of\u00a0interbeing\u00a0<\/em>and its related concept of verbal emptiness. The paradox: they\u2019re enrolled in a writing class with a professor telling them to become more comfortable with the nonverbal and\u00a0not writing.\u00a0<\/em>When has a writing teacher ever told them to notice pauses and blanks in their writing experience\u2014to honor not writing? How does that differ from garden variety procrastination? Does it? How does one teach this concept to a bunch of twenty-year-old\u2019s?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI said, \u2018We\u2019re sitting in our seats in this lecture hall in this moment. Let\u2019s just think about our clothing, the gasoline we used today for our commute to school, the food in our bodies, everything happening right now. What of all that did we originate? Did I originate the gasoline? How long would it take me to make a car? The pen you\u2019re holding, even the paper in your notebook? Think about the hundreds of people who are behind that laptop or your sneakers or the food in your belly, the coffee on your breath. In point of fact, we\u2019re all intermeshed. It\u2019s the same thing with writing and with language: we didn\u2019t invent the language we use. Every moment of writing means interbeing and intertextual, middles, no beginnings or ends, no independent origination or individual, freestanding genius. That\u2019s our consciousness as writers. So, I think that\u2019s my version of religion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beverly: I don\u2019t think of God when I read poetry. I love the language as it says something to me. It takes me somewhere. What words are important to you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alexandria:<\/strong> \u201cPresent moment. If I had a tattoo, it\u2019d be the phrase, \u201cOnly Connect,\u201d from E.M. Forster, the novelist. Or a mindful writing mantra. My mantra is \u201cYour ability to write is always present,\u201d as well as \u201cEvery breath is covered in language.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beverly: Are you saying don\u2019t doubt yourself?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alexandria:<\/strong> \u201cI\u2019m saying simply notice that you\u2019re doubting. Notice that you\u2019re feeling uncomfortable doubting. Just see it as a fire in front of you. You don\u2019t reject it. Don\u2019t add anything extra onto the moment by judging yourself or the feeling. Instead, it\u2019s \u201cokay, I\u2019m doubting myself right this moment. I\u2019ll just sit with it and watch it as the doubt invariably changes, as everything does fade and change.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI tell my students: you\u2019re never anything permanently. You\u2019re never a bad writer or a good writer. If you wait long enough, everything changes. To be plainly spoken, I do wish people would doubt themselves less as writers and readers. I want to promote people\u2019s positive relationship with their language. But more important in the end (even if it\u2019s not always easy on me to carry forth this teaching) is to help people notice, observe, and accept (not reject) even their doubt.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beverly: Should poetry be read aloud or silent?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alexandria:<\/strong> \u201cIt depends. I know that for me, interacting with poetry is silent. Some people favor listening to the sonic qualities of sound.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beverly: What is your style of writing?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alexandria:<\/strong> \u201cIn the past, people responding to my work have called me post-modern, I guess. I think \u201clively\u201d and \u201cI\u2019m alive.\u201d I think \u201cengaged in the world.\u201d My newest book,\u00a0The Battle of Silicon Valley at Daybreak,\u00a0<\/em>is about our current times: politics and social media abound. Federal judges hide behind houseplants, a sonnet explodes from sexism, statues of penthouse dictators are toppled, and a mountain threatens to drop on top of a hiker as an out-of-touch act of homophobia. I\u2019m happy to include tangible, concrete details in my poetry and some humor. I\u2019ve been told by my husband that in person, I\u2019m a German kind of not-funny, but that\u2019s not the case with my writing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beverly: Who is your favorite poet?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alexandria:<\/strong> \u201cIf I had to say one person, Emily Dickinson is my favorite.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beverly: I have pictures of her poems on my bedroom wall, along with Mary Oliver.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alexandria:<\/strong> \u201cI\u2019ll give my students a Dickinson poem without her name. Most won\u2019t recognize the writer. Afterward, they\u2019re deeply surprised. Dickinson is one of the most unflinchingly brutal writers you\u2019ll ever encounter. She\u2019s not little field flowers and songbirds unless the little yellow finch is removing its own heart. This woman was up to something. If I randomly open my elastic-bound collected Dickinson in a moment of bibliomancy, nearly any Dickinson poem I encounter will offer unparalleled meaning in that moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beverly: Rhyme or no rhyme?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alexandria:<\/strong> \u201cI\u2019ve never been a traditional poet, but I did teach a craft of traditional forms class last semester. I told my students that prosody isn\u2019t my forte, and to comfort their own worries about iambic pentameter, I shared how one of my college teachers once said out of frustration that I had a tin ear. I told them that we\u2019ll learn verse forms and meter together. By the end of the semester, I\u2019d found a national undergraduate contest in formal poetry with a $500 first prize and no entry fee. Instead of a final portfolio or exam, why not submit our villanelles, sonnets, sestinas, and ghazal on the last day of class? Students had the option of entering their work in the contest or not (they didn\u2019t have to hit \u201cSubmit\u201d). About two months later, I received a text from an excited student from that class:\u00a0\u201cI\u2019m honorable mention!\u201d A few minutes later, I received a second text message from a second student in that class, so now we had two honorable mentions. I waited, Cheshire cat smiling. A third text message arrived, reading, \u201cOMG! I won first place in that contest!\u201d Needless to say, I was such a proud writing teacher (probably insufferable to my English department colleagues).\u201d<\/p>\n

Beverly: Another poem I pulled was\u00a0Counterfeit Clarice Last Lispector.\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0\u201cPearl choker on a possum, suit jacket on a raccoon. A skunk, a lynx, two tubby foxes moonlighting as twin nephews or as young men dated our daughters.\u201d Please tell us about this poem.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alexandria:<\/strong> \u201cA couple of the poems in\u00a0Battle of Silicon Valley at Daybreak<\/em>\u00a0reference Christ and the Last Supper. Clarice Lispector was a Brazilian fiction writer who wrote one of the most amazing short stories, \u201cThe Sharing of Loaves,\u201d about people reluctantly (that\u2019s putting it pleasantly) attending a lunch at someone\u2019s home. The speaker is so bitter: the opening seeps with why-do-I-have-to-be-here attitude until the hostess appears. It\u2019s really last supper-ish. The hostess appears with an abundance of oddly described food, none of which is straightforward food. The pickles have spikes. The grapes are sadomasochists. It\u2019s all kind of odd\u2014nothing exactly edible. By the story\u2019s end, the narrator is redeemed. In the last paragraph, the narrator repents her misdirected bitterness, realizing its true source was her secret sense of inadequacy. In \u201cCounterfeit Clarice Last Lispector,\u201d I\u2019m spoofing off of \u201cThe Sharing of Loaves\u201d; the poem is about ingratitude.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Beverly: Tell me about the cover of\u00a0Battle of Silicon Valley at Daybreak.\u00a0<\/em>Who is on it and why did you choose it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alexandria:<\/em><\/strong> \u201c<\/em>The poem, also called \u201cThe Battle of Silicon Valley at Daybreak,\u201d was accepted in an online magazine. After a few months, I checked to see if the poem had been published, searching the poem title in Google, and up pops this image, \u201cThe Battle of Silicon Valley\u201d (no time of day), with Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, and the other usual suspects on horses, bodies of fallen soldiers, destroyed contemporary cityscape in the backdrop. It was by a student, Jennifer Shon Hill. I contacted her and asked if I could use the image for the book cover.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beverly: The cover makes the book.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alexandria:<\/strong> \u201cWhen I saw that somebody else had done a visual version with the same title, hers is Battle of Silicon Valley, and mine has at Daybreak. I think I was referencing a painting of George Washington. I had to have it. I reached out to her.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beverly: Wow, that is kismet.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alexandria:<\/strong> \u201cExactly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beverly: What started the poem?\u00a0 Please describe it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alexandria:<\/strong> \u201cIt\u2019s a two-page poem with stanzas that I tend to strum like a guitar. Mostly it depicts a narrator looking at an unusual mural outside a cafeteria in a social media company\u2014a Renaissance-style battle scene, except the soldiers, are emojis. They are fighting for net neutrality and against internet regulation. This poem folds in reference in different classical battle texts, Iliad, Homer, and the soldier emojis come from different time periods, including the American Revolutionary War. In one stanza, a goddess falls in love with one of the emojis who works in a cubicle in Silicon Valley. She becomes pregnant to someone half Hollywood, half New Jersey mortal, with a weak ankle. It\u2019s got attributes of Hollywood and also Greco-Roman, but I\u2019m also talking with the awareness that I have never served in the military. I\u2019m somebody who can read a book about the Vietnam War but have not had any personal service. These emoji are the people sent to battle, and they suffer and die, instead of people like me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beverley: Why emojis?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alexandria:<\/strong> \u201cIt\u2019s based on Giorgio Vasari\u2019s fresco describing the 1554 battle between Florence and Sienna, a horrific rivalry orchestrated by the Medici family. When I saw the wrap-around mural of the battle in Florence, in my mind\u2019s eye, I saw thousands of smiley faces instead of replicated men\u2019s faces.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beverly:<\/strong> I love the line, \u201cOutfitted in a list supplied by Wikipedia (breastplates, gauntlets, steel collars, mail shirts.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alexandria:<\/strong> In the second stanza, I say, if an emoji soldier is poor, they can get chain mail made from a 3-d printer.<\/em>\u00a0I love to incorporate text from other places, and I\u2019ll change genres in the middle of a poem. I\u2019ll quote Wikipedia. The numbers in that poem I just made up. I wanted to give the sense of thousands of happy emojis, thousands of crying emojis. All the different types.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beverly: And then we have, \u201ca Cubicle Emoji, petitions the Board of Directors to rescue Jim from his jangling fate of war, seduces him, give birth to a daughter, 1\/2 Hollywood, 1\/2 New Jersey mortal, with a weak ankle\u2026Emoji were at war.\u201d Such a good poem.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alexandria:<\/strong> \u201cThank you. That one makes me a little uncomfortable because I realize the gravity of the topic, but it\u2019s also funny. That combination may not sit entirely well with some.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beverly: It ends with, \u201cthey have seen how emoji blood sounds like a ring tone of a 50 gun salute in a thousand wavy ploughed lines, lines, lines, lines where truth is marching on.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

What truth?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alexandria:<\/strong> \u201cI\u2019m rifting off of Julia Ward Howe\u2019s Civil War poem, \u201cThe Battle Hymn of the Republic.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI tell my students that how you handle your rejection moments will speak volumes about you and your path as a writer. As one of my initiatives as state poet laureate, I started an online teen literary magazine called\u00a0Under the Madness Magazine<\/em>\u00a0with teens from New Hampshire as editors and staff readers. Helping younger writers, including these editors, handle rejection and success is part of the mission of that magazine. By the by, this magazine is open to any teen writing in English in the world. In our first issue, we\u2019ve published several international teens. Our second issue should be out and about in time for the 2022 North Country Writers\u2019 Day on May 6.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beverly: How will it publish?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alexandria:<\/strong> \u201cIt\u2019s all online.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beverly: Tell me about mindfulness.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alexandria:<\/strong> \u201cI specialize in mindful writing\u2014I have a book on the topic,\u00a0Prolific Moment: Theory and Practice of Mindfulness for Writing\u00a0<\/em>(Routledge 2018) and a 2019 TEDx talk. One of the scariest things I\u2019ve ever done. In the past two or so years, I\u2019ve been giving presentations and workshops on mindful writing, including for the National Council of Teachers of English, NaNoWriMo, NH Humanities, and as a keynote address.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beverly: I have a friend who wants to do that.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alexandria:<\/strong> \u201cShe should just do it. Do it. Do it. Try, try, try, try, try. There\u2019s a great book I checked out at the library on TEDx presentations and how to rhetorically shape them. That was a real valuable resource by the guy who founded TED: Chris Anderson\u2019s\u00a0TED Talks.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Beverly: How did mindfulness start with you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alexandria:<\/strong> \u201cIt started at the Iowa Writers\u2019 Workshop. I had bad writer\u2019s block for years. I doubted and treated myself very poorly\u2014while persisting, which just gave me more practice doubting and treating myself poorly. Perfectionism. I worked for nine months on a single poem. One poem. Nine months is ridiculous. I\u2019d get up at four in the morning to work on it every day. I was so caught up. I pulled myself up, and then I\u2019d falter. A combination of mindfulness practice and the very premature birth of my first daughter: these two factors came together at the same moment in my mid-thirties. Sophia had to remain by herself in a neonatal care unit in Boston while her father and I were in Milford, NH. It was so sad. The only way I could cope with Sophia\u2019s birth was I would sit at the desk and say, I\u2019m going to write right now, whatever comes to mind. Whatever I\u2019m experiencing now, I\u2019m going to write.\u201d For the first time in my life, I put present awareness beside listening to internal language, and suddenly I was writing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI noticed a high level of acceptance and grace: my entire goal was to accept whatever arose, and I was able to write, and it never stopped afterward. A decade later, I finished\u00a0Prolific Moment,<\/em>\u00a0an academic book making a hard-core scholarly argument why this isn\u2019t touchy-feely. In reality, you only write in the present moment. In traditional writing instruction, we don\u2019t ask students to really engage in the present moment. We never write in the past. You never write in the future. You only write now. Overlooking the real-time actuality of writing\u2014and teaching students to overlook the moment\u2014causes lifelong obstacles. I do believe, though, that the concept of mindful writing is catching on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beverly:<\/strong> How do you stay in the moment when you are writing?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alexandria: <\/strong>\u201cOne of the best ways is to become embodied: so, watching breathing and watching the physical sensations of now. However, a whole tool kit of writing resources arise from observing the present moment: the first is monkey mind (observing with detachment the ongoing chatter in our heads). We are always off-roading from the present, letting our internal babble abscond with us into daydreaming, fantasizing, and hearing things. Try to stay, stay, stay. By staying, you gain access to your monkey mind, our friend, because it is always supplying us with words, a river of language. You always have something to write if you can remain observant and non-judgmental (detached). On the other hand, the monkey mind is Janus-faced: it whispers messages, not nice ones, about our writing ability.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe second tool is the embodiment. You start noticing you get ideas from everywhere. The last one is impermanence. Everything is always fluctuating and changing. That\u2019s cool because nothing is ever static. You\u2019re never one thing. You\u2019re not a bad student or a gifted writer. Things fluctuate. Watch it mindfully. It\u2019s wonderful. Radical impermanence is a blessing for a writer. I also teach verbal emptiness, how to notice blankness, and not to be afraid of it: form is interconnected with formlessness. You start noticing that there are no readers during the real-time of writing: at the moment of writing, you are wonderfully alone. You\u2019re separated in space and time from your future readers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMindful writing is my life. It\u2019s what I\u2019ll likely continue to support in the community after my poet laureate term ends.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By BEVERLY STODDART, A NH Writer\u2019s Life As New Hampshire Poet Laureate, Alexandria Peary \u201cserves as an ambassador for all poets in New Hampshire and works to heighten the visibility and value of poetry in the state.\u201d I contend she is perfect for the role. Let\u2019s start with, she is funny. I found this as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":6636,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[168,27],"tags":[29],"ppma_author":[352],"class_list":["post-6634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-granite-state-poetry","category-member-spotlight","tag-featured"],"yoast_head":"\nGranite State Poetry - NH Poet Laureate, Alexandria Peary - New Hampshire Writers\u2019 PROJECT<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/nhwritersproject.org\/granite-state-poetry-nh-poet-laureate-alexandria-peary\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Granite State Poetry - NH Poet Laureate, Alexandria Peary - New Hampshire Writers\u2019 PROJECT\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By BEVERLY STODDART, A NH Writer\u2019s Life As New Hampshire Poet Laureate, Alexandria Peary \u201cserves as an ambassador for all poets in New Hampshire and works to heighten the visibility and value of poetry in the state.\u201d I contend she is perfect for the role. Let\u2019s start with, she is funny. 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