Placeholding

Life isn’t easy right now. It’s a little embarrassing that this is such a loud refrain in this blog. Is it ever (for me? for anyone?)? Feels like since I started this blog, though, at the start of the pandemic, my life and the life of the world, my interior world and my external circumstances, my family’s and my community’s circumstances…have all been a little darker and heavier.

But I’m not talking about that now. Instead about the one thin thread of good, the sharp line of shine that spills a little bit of itself into the rest of these dark days. Writing has been my lifeline. I’m working and working on bringing poetry and storytelling into my life wholly and honestly, with something like awe. From the generative practice to the reading, the time with self and the world and the listening, the revision and the sharing of the work.

This last part—the sharing—was illuminated powerfully to me recently by the august Annie Finch, in an Imbolc ceremony she held through her community Poetry Witch. Another person in the group (and I practically cried in assent) lamented her “ego”, her jealousy and upset at not selling as much of her art as she wanted to, not being “successful” in the ways she intended. She felt shallow for focusing so much on her “ambition”, and on competition. Like her values were out of whack. I told her I understood and empathized and that I worked to value the process and the work for it’s own sake, that it was so hard…and then Annie offered her piece (which I’ll liberally paraphrase). Artists want to give. Their natural state is giving the gift of their art. The “ambition” is to share, in a gifting economy. This drive is a crucial part of the work’s cycle. The “competition” comes in through our capitalist, patriarchal systems that pervert our giving into selling. In reality, outside of that matrix, there is space for all of us to share and shine. Ambition is good. And then she put on her papier mâché Brigid head and we all dissolved into sublimity. It was a moment.

I’m so grateful to have this mindset as I enter a year that I feel will be—in some way unknown to me as yet—transformative for my work and life. And so I’m submitting my work and sharing it more than I ever have been—and I’m writing it thinking of others, of what it can offer others, more than I ever have. Writing more openly, more clearly, more courageously. In that spirit, then, here are the pieces I’ve published so far this year. I hope you read and enjoy and share.

Gravida 3 para 1 (Florida Review)

Four poems (The Rumpus)

Flung girl (Rust + Moth)

“The Baby” (in And if that mockingbird don’t sing, Alternating Current Press)

I’d like to make this blog a space for mini-reviews, for writing about writing, craft pieces and such. Not just news of publications. I just can’t seem to find the time right now. As a reminder to myself I’m calling this post a placeholder for those more substantive posts to come.