So what am I writing about these days? Black expats, space, loveliness, and more

I started this journey thinking that I would focus on Black expats and the interstitial spaces.  Interstice, being a small space between closely placed things.  I was thinking of being insider and outsider all at once through language, culture, race.  As someone who has lived abroad, returned to the States, traveled abroad, and considered returning to work overseas, this is part of my lived experience, but for me, the transitions are far more fluid that that experienced by folk like Josephine Baker, James Baldwin, and Nina Simone.  I have, in the last few days, reading excessively about their lives, watching documentaries, and also reading the blog entries of current Black expats.  I've been wanting to write this work for a long while, and it's definitely something that I will be exploring in the coming weeks while I am away.  I am also interested in the power of movement in physical body and in transportation, the methods of going from one place to another, what easily crosses and what remains in the space without the wind/urge to move.

I am taking a class in the fall for my Masters in Fine Arts in Poetry at Saint Mary's College of California.  One of the classes that focuses on the foundations of literature has at its core a focused reading of common texts and a research project.  The research project can be a critical analysis paper or creative paper.  I'm choosing to start my project early by conducting research on Black expats now and writing a series of poems to refine in the workshops that will start in the fall and in the tutorial.  My intention is to start work on a third manuscript ... really my fourth manuscript, but I had to write the third one and let it go to make way to do something different.  I'm planning on doing some exploration with poetic forms in this manuscript, exploring more experimental forms on the page.