Through her writing, Elaine Logan shares her memories of growing up at a tuberculosis sanitarium, where her father was a doctor. Photo courtesy of Passager

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Baltimore poet Diane Macklin published her work with Passager, a Baltimore-based literary press for writers over age 50.

Writing poetry is like baking a fresh batch of oatmeal raisin cookies. At least that’s what poet John Biggs says.  

For Biggs, poetry doesn’t have to be perfect but should have an insight, reflect our passions and — most importantly — be honest.  

His poem “Sudsville” was recently published in Passager, a Baltimore-based literary journal highlighting the work of older writers. The poem received an honorable mention in Passager’s 2024 Poetry Contest.  

Founded in Baltimore in 1990, Passager is a magazine and literary press dedicated to publishing the work of older adults. Its four editors often help people unlock their passion for writing.  

Its annual poetry contest reaches out to all poets, professional and otherwise. Submissions are accepted until April 15, 2025, and the winners will be announced in June.  

From therapist to poet 

Music and language always inspired Biggs, a Roland Park resident who grew up fluent in English and Spanish. 

He began writing poems in the 1960s, mostly to score dates. “When I first started writing poems, women liked them,” he said. 

The beat poets and counterculture movement of the 60s and 70s bolstered his creative flow. But eventually, life intruded and he became a psychotherapist.  

“Storytelling and language and metaphor are an important part of the business,” he pointed out. 

Although he continued writing poetry, Biggs didn’t devote much time to it until decades later, when he retired.  

“The poems started to come when I decided that you could write a poem about anything, and your poem didn’t have to be ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,’” he said, referring to T.S. Eliot’s masterpiece. “You could just write a poem and then go on to the next poem.”  

He demonstrates this easygoing approach in “Sudsville,” a poem about a man at the laundromat reading a book titled How To Be a Better Husband.  

In the poem, Biggs compares the laundromat to an aquarium, where fish are trapped in repetitive cycles, like clothes in a washing machine — and like a husband making the same mistakes over and over again.  

“Poems give you the ability to write about a tiny snippet of life and then make some greater sense of that tiny moment,” he said.  

Biggs heard about Passager’s poetry contest from a friend, poet Nikia Leopold, who had invited him to her poetry workshop at Johns Hopkins University.  

After that, he began seeking out other poets, taking workshops with acclaimed poet Tony Hoagland and former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins. He also took a writing workshop with Passager’s editor, Mary Azrael.  

Leopold suggested he submit his poems to the Passager Poetry Contest, which he wouldn’t have discovered otherwise.  

“John’s poems are excellent company, like the man himself,” Leopold said. “They are ever insightful, often witty, and though they go deep, they always hold hope.”  

Living like her mother 

Baltimore poet Diane Macklin was preparing to visit her mother when she got a call from a medical examiner asking her to identify her mother’s body. 

This shock of grief moved Macklin to write her poem “Mother Ashes,” which Passager also published in its Poetry Contest issue last year.  

Macklin taught English in middle school and became a professional storyteller in 2000. For her, storytelling is “an ancestral echo, a cellular memory,” she said.  

She often told stories about her mother, who fled her birthplace in Mississippi for New York — part of the Great Migration from the American South to Northern cities to escape racism.  

From working as a live-in maid in New York City to becoming the “first woman and second person of color to work in skilled trade at General Motors in Tarrytown, New York,” Macklin said, her mother always strove forward.  

“They put a story on her, and she just kept defying it,” she said.  

After her mother died in a car accident at age 75, Macklin knew she had to step out of her comfort zone. 

“I wanted to live as boldly as my mother…there were places that I lived in fear, and one of them was putting my writing out in public.”  

One of her first steps was going to the CityLit Festival, held every April in Baltimore, where she met Passager’s editors.  

“Oh, these are my kind of people,” she remembers thinking. “They really care about the writers, authentically and genuinely, and are making space so that everyone has access to this,” Macklin said.  

Macklin wants her writing “to be big enough for people to fit in and specific enough that I am not erased,” she said.  

From observation to creation  

Elaine Logan spent her childhood at a tuberculosis sanitarium in rural Pennsylvania. She wasn’t a patient; her father was a physician there.  

Decades later, she began taking writing classes in her senior living community, Roland Park Place, and writing about her memories from that time. Passager included Logan’s short memoir “For Your Trouble” in its Winter 2021 magazine.  

The story focuses on a man who begs Logan’s father to deliver his wife’s breech baby. As payment, the family offers some rabbits they hunted. 

“I wanted the reader to understand that there are people living in those houses up in the woods,” Logan said. “They have very little to offer anyone else, and yet they do.”  

Logan first signed up for a writing workshop with the Johns Hopkins Odyssey Lifelong Learning Program. In that “exceptional” class, she recalled, a teacher led a discussion as students critiqued each other’s work. 

In 2020, Logan joined a memoir workshop class with Roseanne Singer, Passager’s assistant editor. In that setting, Logan said, there was no criticism. Everyone simply read their work out loud and encouraged their peers, regardless of their writing experience. 

Singer praised Logan for her contributions to the workshop. “Elaine has been the backbone of our memoir group since the summer of 2020,” she said in an email. “Elaine has an incredible memory of her life as a young child, and those rich details bring her work to life.”  

Along with Singer, Logan received encouragement from Passager editors Azrael and Kendra Kopelke, whom she met at a University of Baltimore event. 

Years later, Logan sent “For Your Trouble” to Kopelke, hoping for feedback. To her surprise, Passager wanted to include her piece in their next issue.  

With her open and detailed writing, Logan continues to mine her memories to find ways to emphasize the beautiful moments in life. 

For more information about Passager and its annual poetry contest, visit passagerbooks.com/submit or email editors@passagerbooks.com.