With Poetry Out Loud just around the corner, we're excited to introduce you to some of the people who make this exciting program happen! Taylor Johnson is the new Southern Arizona regional coordinator for Poetry Out Loud, as well as a poet, educator, and dreamworker.
Tell us a little bit about yourself.
My name is Taylor Johnson. I've lived in Tucson since 2002. I'm a mom, an artist, a desert dweller, a writer, and an educator. I’m passionate about remembering my nightly dreams, and connecting with others devoted to cultivating and deepening their inner creative lives.
Tell us about your organization.
I'm pretty much a free agent at this point, but I do wear a few different professional hats. I teach writing at Pima Community College as an adjunct, and I also teach poetry in a variety of K-12 schools for the Writing the Community program as a teaching artist through the Poetry Center. I also do private consulting as a dreamworker guiding local, national, and even international clients in exploring their nightly dreams using a variety of somatic, creative, and analytical methods, offering both one-on-one sessions and workshops.
What is your Poetry Out Loud role?
I am serving as the Southern Regional Coordinator for Poetry Out Loud. This is my first year in that role.
When did you first learn about Arizona’s Poetry Out Loud program? How long have you participated in the program?
I first learned about the Poetry Out Loud program when I was a teaching artist in 2005 while earning my MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Arizona. I can recall meeting with students in a school library and talking to them about how to project their voice and interpret their poems with energy and insight. So I started almost twenty years ago, though I haven't participated continuously for that entire length of time. I incorporated Poetry Out Loud into my classes when I taught English at both Desert View High School and City High School over the years and, most recently, I served as a Poetry Out Loud coach for Poetry Center for the past two years, visiting several different area high schools. I coached Isabel Terán from Sahuarita High School, our Arizona POL Finalist who advanced to Nationals in Spring 2024.
What do you enjoy most about Poetry Out Loud?
I relish the opportunity to witness and support students as they find their own unique voices and discover the delight of inhabiting a poem from the inside out. There's something really special about how poems come to live in their bodies and psyches as truths they might have written themselves. It’s like their soul connects with the soul of the person who wrote the poem. That place of deep empathy and communion of expression is where we can realize there are truly no borders or boundaries between our human heart experiences.
What is your favorite poem from the Poetry Out Loud anthology?
It's hard to pick my favorite poem from the Poetry Out Loud anthology because I discover a new favorite every year. But I have to say that our former US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo is one of my all-time beloved poets, so anything she's got in the anthology is potentially my favorite! I remember memorizing “Eagle Poem” several years ago while coaching Poetry Out Loud and falling in love with the prayerful directness and sacred instruction of that poem.
What are you looking forward to in this year’s Poetry Out Loud program?
What I'm most looking forward to is the opportunity to participate in a way that I never have before, which is to attend to the mycelial network of all aspects of the program, from helping coordinate coaches and judges to connecting with classroom teachers and community partners and, of course, motivating and supporting students. I’m also looking forward to interweaving ties with the broader statewide and national network of Poetry Out Loud ecosystems. It feels like a real honor to be able to navigate the behind-the-scenes flow that makes this beautiful resource of creative expression available to so many adventurous high school students in Southern Arizona.
Tell us about your artistic practice. Where can we find your work?
My artistic practice is ever-evolving. I would say I am multi-dimensional in my creative expression, but at my core, I'm a poet. Anyone who is interested in learning about my creative and interdisciplinary efforts with dreamwork can visit symbodythedream.com, where I offer a number of links to avenues where my diverse forms of creative expression can be explored.