Creative Courage: When Artists React to Fire
Poets and Singers on Minnesota, Renee Good, Alex Pretti, and ICE
I’ve been taking a poetry class which offered students a chance to write thirty poems in thirty days. It started January 1st. On January 7th, Renee Nicole Good was murdered in her car in Minneapolis. On January 24th, Alex Pretti was executed in the streets of Minneapolis. Quite a few of us wrote poems that expressed our anger, dismay, and sadness about these events. I’ll share one of mine at the end of this post. I’ll also link to other songs and poems about ICE and the two killings. I suspect I could have a hundred links or perhaps a thousand. Because when something happens that shocks our creative souls awake, we write. We sing. We shake our fists and our words and our chords at the evil that is walking, right now, through our world.
Writers have always been particularly good at exposing the nuances of evil, at identifying the ways it pokes holes in our hearts, and at helping to point the way through darkness.
Sometimes, it feels impossible not to create when we’re scared and angry and deeply upset all at once. It can feel like the universe is demanding that we respond now now now. Now!
In this moment, it feels as if the collective scream of Minneapolis is running from the universe through us and back out in words and songs. And in this time, in 2026, we have tools to share our work. We have Instagram and YouTube and FaceBook and our own websites and even SubStacks.
Here’s my poem, written as a class exercise to write an elegy.
Elegy for Minneapolis, where I have never been
In my imagination you were calm and sleepy
like the rest of the Midwest, cold in winter
and perhaps more in love with fried food
than we are in the Pacific Northwest. But surely
you have water and trees and gardens and quieter
streets than New York or LA. You were a place for good.
Now, you are a chant, a call and response plea
for masked men to leave your streets and stop
shooting nurses and mother poets: Good and Pretti.
You may never be sleepy again, may never be
left out of history books. Your donut shop
may be as famous as Haight and Ashbury.
Perhaps it will not, after all, end as a tragedy.
Maybe, unlike Tiananmen Square or Market
and Castro, Minneapolis will be a bright light
because you sang in the face of your misery
and whistled into the freezing cold, a target
for evil you beat back in a most excellent fight.
Many of us are writing about, having nightmares about, fretting about the masked men in our streets, the gunshots, the lies. Of course, that’s not just creatives. But we writers and singers and artists are providing voices for Americas pain. And not just our own. Creative people are writing about Palestine and Ukraine and other places. Whoever you are, wherever you are, however you create, raise your voice, your pen, your brush. Be in the streets, in conversations, in any form of support that works for you.
Special thanks to the people in Minneapolis who are showing up so well, so brightly, so bravely. You are demonstrating love.
I felt deeply moved as I found songs and poems to link for you here. If you can, take time to follow the links, to listen to the songs and read the poems. It might take half an hour to listen to all of the songs. It’s time well spent.
Post your own links (to your work or other’s work) in comments. While I didn’t link to any, there is also great street art and excellent comedy about this moment for Minneapolis, and about the larger stresses that are affecting us all, no matter where are are in the world.
While we get through this. while we beat this and come out into something better, its critical be in community. This isn’t going to fix itself quickly. We’re in it for the long haul and there will be art of all kinds to help us stay connected and strong.
Links:
Songs
Streets of Minneapolis, by Bruce Springsteen
Resistance Bells ~ Abolish ICE, Seth Stanton Watkins
Where is The Line? | Protest Song Calling Out The Cowardly Republicans In Congress, The Resistance
Minnesota (Edited for 2026) by Chad Elliot
Three Shots – A Song for Renee Good | The Midnight Republic
Minnesota Anthem, Marc Skjervem
Poems
An Elegy for Renee Nicole Good, by Danez Smith, Harper’s Bazaar
For Renee Nicole Good: A life extinguished too soon, by Sharon M. Holder, MSR Multimedia
Amanda Gorman honors Alex Pretti in new poem, MSNOW Also contains a link to Amanda’s poem about Renee Nicole Good
Grace in Minneapolis in the Age of Ice, by Barbara Draper, New Verse News
Personal News
Appearances:
February 18th-22nd: Rainforest Writer’s Retreat. This is a lovely retreat in Washington State on the Olympic Peninsula. There are four possible weeks to attend, and rumor suggests there may be a few openings. Dates updated since my last post.
March 3: I’ll be the featured reader at Duvall Poetry, which is open to the public.
March 5-8: Emerald City Comic Con. I’ll have a story coming out at the convention. You’ll be able to find me at the Clarion West table and the Grim Oak booth, and maybe a few other places as well.
Links to my recent work:
Alternative Liberties was released the day that Trump was inaugurated and contains speculative stories and poems about what could happen in a Trump presidency. I have a story in it. A lot of other great writers are also part of this anthology. Barnes and Noble link. Normally wouldn’t link to something that’s a year old, but this collection is pertinent to this post’s topic, and it’s also damned good.
When Mothers Dream: Stories is my latest collection of stories and poems.
My story, The Forest Guard Rescue Service, will be released in the Grimore, a Grim Oak Press Anthology for Emerald City Comic Con 2026.
Reminder:
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