If you visit Shanan Ballam’s website, you’ll see a collection of poems interspersed with photographs of beautiful flower buds, berries and leaves.
“The harder you looked at a poem, the more times you read it, the more things you've seen. The same thing with the photographs, the more you look at them, the more things are revealed,” she said.
The poems here were all written by people associated with Cache Valley. They were each compiled and published by Ballam, Logan City’s official poet laureate.
“I'm a literary representative for the city. As a part of my role, I created "A Celebration of Cache Valley Voices" to help celebrate the diversity of poets in Cache Valley. The only requirement is the person who is affiliated with Cache Valley in some way," she said.
Ballam took over for the first poet laureate, Star Coulbrooke, in 2019. However, she had to take some time off after she suffered a stroke in January 2022.
“I've written poetry ever since I had the stroke, which was really difficult because I couldn't speak. I had expressive aphasia, which means I just had a hard time finding the words and my brain just felt really empty, and blank and dull. But I could still write poems. I'm proud of the work that I do. I'm just proud of it all. Especially coming out of a stroke," Ballam said.
She said, as one of the oldest art forms, expressing your thoughts through poetry is unlike anything else, “Poetry is important to me because it just helps me to express myself in a way that is organized and metaphorical and imagistic and my poems often pay special attention to sound.”
You can find "A Celebration of Cache Valley Voices" and other poetry from Ballam here.
