Lisa Devon is a suburban Mom who uses poetry to express her frustrations with the world. With topics ranging from policities to parenting, no one is spared her ire. Luckily for the listener, the madder she gets, the funnier it is. Lisa Devon’s work is heavily influenced by Dr. Seuss, with word play sandwiched between rhythm & rhyme. Her unexpected voice and impassioned performance offers a fun and fresh perspective on the issues we all face. Lisa Devon has performed at various venues around Indianapolis, IN and in other cities. Her first book of poetry was released by Chatter House Press.

Poetry Lab began in 2010 when Penny and Helen started meeting to experiment with random prompts and the challenge of writing an impromptu poem. Others soon joined, and at its largest, six or seven poets gathered around the table. The locations changed over the years—libraries, coffee houses, and wherever there was room to write—until COVID brought the in-person gatherings to a halt in 2020. We tried meeting virtually, but Poetry Lab was never quite the same through a screen. By 2024, we were back around a table, writing together. Now it’s time to open the Lab doors a little wider and bring the prompts to a larger audience. The goal is to arouse creativity. Not to create a perfect and ready to publish poem, but discover a line or phrase as a basis of another poem. Maybe several lines or phrases. On occassion, a solid poem is born. Here’s how the experiment works: Penny arrives with the bones of a prompt, but everyone attending gets to embellish it by adding a word, idea, image, or other twist. Then the clock starts. You have 20 minutes to write a complete poem—or something resembling one. Use every part of the prompt, ignore half of it, take it somewhere nobody expected; there are no prompt police at Poetry Lab. When time is up, we read our freshly created poems round-robin style, with no critique and no expectation of perfection. The prompt you receive each week was created by the previous week’s Poetry Lab participants, so every prompt carries a little bit of the table with it. And if those 20 minutes produce something you think is pretty darn good, submit it by emailing submission at theoriginalpoetrylab.com. Select poems will be shared.