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Marie Marchand
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the poet
Inaugural Poet Laureate of Ellensburg, Washington State, from 2022 to 2024, Marie Marchand was nominated by iamb for The Pushcart Prize in 2024. Her poetry has appeared in Crannóg Magazine, Catamaran Literary Reader, California Quarterly and elsewhere. Marie is the author of three poetry collections – most recently Gifts to the Attentive – with her fourth, Mostly Sweet, Lovely, Human Things, due out in 2025. Marie is a graduate of Naropa University and The Iliff School of Theology, where she studied psychology, religion and peacemaking.
the poems
As Necessary As
I want to write a poem
where every line counts
as much as breathing.
Where every word is
as necessary as oxygen.
Where if one stanza
was removed, the
whole architecture
of the poem would
crumble because every
part needs the others
that damn much.
It would be a poem
about what I have lost
because how can I know
anything else as intimately,
as desperately, as that
which is no longer under
my fingertips yet is always
on my mind—dancing like
persistent ghosts, utterly
vivid and concrete?
These apparitions are
more alive for me than
this kitchen table,
this paper and pen.
I want to write a poem
where every line counts
as much as breathing.
Then maybe these ghosts
will feel seen and heard
and I can lay what I’ve
lost to rest.
Dinner Party in Boston
Wave-remnants lap the edges of
my memory. It was 30 years ago
when we kissed in the ocean house on silts.
The Atlantic’s wintry breaker spanked
the salted wood beneath our feet
like a metronome.
Surrounded by water
yet haunted by thirst
I kissed you in the hallway
and your cheeks turned to
pure fire
pomegranate-red
the juicy tide of your body rising.
Cool mist from the surf seeped in
through the old home’s joints
dampening the flames. We resumed
mingling, talking small
knowing that soon we would
fall into each other’s ocean
and be quenched.
In Defense of Poetry
as Therapeutic
From the Greek therapeuein: to minister to
It’s true, when I’m having an asthma attack,
I don’t reach for Keats or Kinnell—
I take my inhaler and within minutes
steadfast science rescues me.
But when my heart is filled with grief, I write.
When my life is shuttered by loss
I go to the ancient poets to
hear what they have to say.
They are my lifeline.
Their words get me through
prod me towards something.
Towards going on.
Towards going on.
The only thing that matters in the moment.
The only thing that matters ever.
Why read and write poetry if not for its
curative powers inviting us to wholeness?
Yes, poetry is craft. Poetry is community.
But, above all, poetry is therapeutic:
it ministers to. It divines understanding
of the fledgling self
and by showing us to ourselves,
saves us from our own extinctions.
Publishing credits
As Necessary As / In Defense of Poetry as Therapeutic*:
exclusive first publication by iamb
Dinner Party in Boston: POETICS: Water – Life & Death
(Bainbridge Island Press)
*Nominated for The Pushcart Prize