Mission
The mission of the Needham Poet Laureate Program is to enhance the cultural life of Needham by promoting awareness and appreciation of poetry to a wide range of audiences. Poetry enhances self-awareness and expression, improves language, sparks creativity, and expands world views. It helps us understand and appreciate the world and its diversity, and it helps us connect with each other with its potential to transform our thinking, attitudes, and behaviors.
The Poet Laureate is someone who lives or works in Needham, has created a substantial body of literary arts including poetry, and has a commitment to the community and to the role of poetry in society. The role includes holding events such as writing workshops and readings, and creating programming in collaboration with the Needham Free Public Library, the Needham Public Schools, Health & Human Services, and Park & Recreation.
[Anne E.G. Nydam, Needham’s inaugural Poet Laureate, was announced in December 2024.]
Current Needham Poet Laureate
Anne E.G. Nydam has been enjoying and writing poetry since childhood, even having poems published in Cricket magazine’s contests for children. A somewhat twisty path took her from a BA in linguistics from Yale to teaching middle school art for ten years, and from there to showing her relief block prints in art shows and writing novels while staying at home with her twins, who were born and raised in Needham. She’s served as the lead organizer of Needham Open Studios since 2007, taught block printmaking workshops for both children and adults with Needham Community Education (and others) since 2012, and since 2016 she’s appeared at North Hill and local conventions to present lectures and readings on topics in art, fiction, writing, and linguistics.
Anne has published sixteen books, mostly fiction, for preschool children through adults, and in the past several years has been writing mostly short stories and poetry. Her work has been published in several magazines and anthologies, including Fantasy Magazine, Friends Journal, and When Flowers Sing: A Poetry Anthology. Her most recent book, released in January 2025 is Bittersweetness & Light, a hope-filled, joy-inducing collection of magical short stories, poetry, and art, which you can find at the Needham Free Public Library here. You can find out more about her and her work at NydamPrints.com.
“Needham’s First Poet Laureate”
Needham Channel
Poems
Notes from the Poet Laureate: A Working Poet
By Anne E.G. Nydam
I’ve been getting asked a lot what a poet actually does, and what it means to be a working poet, so this month I’ll answer that question – at least for me. I’m not a full-time poet (very few people actually are), but even the poet part of my life is composed of three elements, only one of which is actually writing poems. Another main component is the thinking, observing, daydreaming, reading, experiencing, noticing, and living that gives me something to write about. Letting the heart absorb the world and letting the brain mull on it are vital parts of the writing process even though they don’t look like “working.” It’s not exactly passive, since the more I’m in the habit of filtering my experiences through an awareness of possible poetry the more easily the ideas come. But it’s also not exactly active, since ideas often need to lie fallow for a while in the back of the subconscious before they can figure out how (or whether) they want to sprout.
When it comes to the actual putting of words on paper, that includes having a little notebook to jot down ideas and phrases whenever they might come. (No doubt smartphone notes would work for most people, but I’ve never gotten the hang of that!) I do generally start drafts on my computer. I get as much as I can in one sitting, and then I might come back to it a couple of times over the course of a day or two if the idea is still niggling at me. At a certain point, however, I set it aside and let the draft sit for a while, usually at least a week, and then come back to it again with fresh eyes and ears. Sometimes I don’t feel the spark any more or I can’t make it work the way I want. I have a whole file of unfinished poems which may or may not ever manage to turn into something finished. Other times I succeed in working the piece into something that pleases me, and I call it finished. Sometimes this flows pretty easily and other times it takes some real wrestling. In either case I often go back and tweak and polish a few more times. In fact, sometimes I keep tweaking and tweaking every time I look at it until I have to “declare victory” and make myself leave it alone.
The third part of being a “working poet” is the part that has to do with getting poems into the world. That’s researching the places I want to submit, keeping track of their submission windows and requirements, sending off poems, and getting in rejections. Rejections are a big part of every writer’s life and my mantra is “Keep the rejection pipeline flowing.” Rejections are never fun, but they’re easier to shake off as long as I still have other submissions out, holding open the hope that although this one failed, maybe the next one will succeed. In the past two years I’ve had 79 poem rejections! I’ve got 26 submissions currently out, and in two years I’ve had 9 poems published, including my poet laureate poem for Needham, which you can read here. My other 4 poems published in 2025 are “Mud Season” at Haiku Newton, “The Green Girl Thinks of Home” at New Myths, “Okapis” at 4LPH4NUM3R1C, and “Jorinde Remembers” at Strange Horizons. (You can find links to all these and my other publications going back farther at my web site, if you want to read more.)
This year I also had a book launch of Bittersweetness & Light (which includes poems, short stories, and art), helped launch the poetry walk at First Parish UU in Needham (which also included a number of my haiku), participated in a poetry reading with the Haiku Newton project, gave an interview and reading on local TV program “For the Love of Words,” presented a solo show of poems paired with block prints at Gorse Mill Gallery, ran a Kickstarter campaign for my next book, and of course all of the many activities associated with the job of Poet Laureate for Needham. That’s a lot of time and work that isn’t writing poetry, but which is still part of the job of sharing poetry.
Often that third type of work isn’t nearly as much fun as the first two. It can also feel like a diametrically opposite skill set from the quiet, solitary, creative work of imagining and writing. Trying to get my work in front of other people can be discouraging, uncomfortable, nerve-wracking, and exhausting. So why bother with the slog of submissions, rejections, and soul-baring vulnerability? Because poetry reaches its fullest potential when it makes connections between people, and that’s a gift that requires taking the leap to share it.