You probably know Matthew Ivan Bennett from his plays, whether for the stage — like his 2013 play about gender identity, Eric(a), or Mesa Verde, which explored the enduring scars of chronic illness — or for the radio (listen here for a recording of “Sleepy Hollow,” produced by KUER RadioWest and Plan-B Theatre Company).
Bennett is also a poet, with his work published by the Western Humanities Review, Sugar House Review, and most recently by unearthed, the online literary journal published by SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry.
For our Poets in Pajamas series, Bennett has chosen to read two life-line poems, poems that, as he says, “throw you a life preserver at the right time.” The first “The Winds of Fate” is by Ella Wheeler Wilcox. The second is Bennett’s own, “A Secret Unkown.”
A SECRET UNKNOWN
Peace rings out of us,
a bell never struck,
changing all of space.
The space within, it rang—
struck with unsaid piece—
and bellowed with change.
Pieces of space, we
are wrung and struck through
change like abbey bells.
The belly of space
is peace ringing out,
unstruck, but changing.
Currently Bennett is working on a theatre project called “Let Down Your Hair,” an original play, which will be staged by Wasatch Theatre Company in the spring of 2023.
Running annually during the month of April, Poets in Pajamas invites Utah poets to read from their own work and the work of a poet they admire.
Categories: Literary Arts | Poets in Pajamas
