Daily Times

Valerie Rochon is eager to read her email every Monday morning, even when it makes her cry. In addition to the endless Zoom meeting invitations, each week brings a new poem tucked into otherwise matter-of-fact messages about the coronavirus pandemic from the Portsmouth city manager. Tammi Truax, the city´s poet laureate, has been contributing to the newsletters since early April, elevating the collection of public health updates and community resources with a layer of emotion and introspection. “I think she´s absolutely brilliant,” said Rochon, who leads the Portsmouth chamber of commerce. “I look forward on Monday mornings to getting my week started with the wisdom and beauty that she shares.”

When she was named poet laureate last year, Truax planned multiple projects around the theme “Poetry as a Bridge,” including using poetry to cultivate a more meaningful relationship between the residents of Portsmouth and its sister city of Nichinan, Japan. But after a planned trip there with high school students was scrapped in April due to the pandemic, she instead she wrote a poem honoring the nursing students whose graduation they were supposed to attend. And she has been highlighting Japanese forms of poetry, such as haiku – “Some nights are so dark/that the moon alone is sure/morning will come” – and tanka, which she described as more personal and metaphorical – “The bramble extends/a thorny cane offering/perfect raspberries/while everywhere else I look/an imperfect world festers.