Dreaming of sabbatical 2018 - 2019

There are places that I would like to see as the world is wide and wondrous:

• DoDEA schools in Okinawa, Spain, Italy, and Cuba.  
• Cuba to connect with artists and writers and educators
• Kenya to go back to Daraja Academy and work with teachers and students
• Puerto Rico to think about homeland; Cameroon for the same
• Ireland and specifically Cork to think about arts and rebellion
• Croatia and Greece because beauty
• the DR and Haiti because Caribbean; Jamaica because family
• Thailand and Bali - arts-immersion
• Galapagos and Iceland - because how often do you get to have a chance to get there.
• India for arts, history, language, religious dialogue and Palestine and Israel for the same
• New Zealand because I felt at home there, strangely, years ago
• Peru - Machu Picchu; Brazil because family
• Sri Lanka because I've always wanted to go back and the Brothers and the schools
• Ghana, Nigeria, Egypt, because I have friends from these places and I want to see more parts of the continent.
• China because I've only ever been to Hong Kong
• Bamberg, Germany because I loved living there and Berlin because I enjoyed the arts community
• Italy because Family

The list is way too long and I forget that God-willing, I will have a long life and other times to see all of these places.  But if I were to get my way, I think travel might look like this:

May 2018 a two week trip to Cuba to connect with artists there

June and July 2018 at home in Berkeley working on the anthology

August traveling with my in-laws, maybe to someplace like India or Thailand or Bali or Sri Lanka or China.  In Italy, the holidays are most of August.  

September returning back to Italy to stay in Como or Milan through December.  With some long weekend or week trips to 

• Croatia, Greece, Ireland, Germany

Maybe we could take WOW Airlines there and have a stop in Iceland. I'd like to be in Bamberg for a fest at the beginning of September. 

January 2019 in Kenya with a class of students

February back in Italy

March Berkeley

April Conference season in the States

May - Puerto Rico before it gets too hot, though it is always hot

June - Home in Berkeley

BUT ... I have a dog and a partner who like things far more stable than that.  It would probably be us based in Ireland, Germany, or Italy and me taking short trips to other places.  Both are the easiest for us with the dog and family.  

There are a few specific projects that I would like to look into:

• Networking:  I would like to explore through in-person contacts with DoDEA personnel abroad in establishing a teacher education program extension especially geared towards former troops and military spouses interested in entering the teaching profession.  (Germany)

• Study on the Lives of Teachers in different contexts (public/private and in different countries, interviews in personal and professional spaces, all found through a platform like Twitter or Edmodo)

• Essays:  I am also interested in writing more deeply into the relationship between poetry as a liberatory practice; technology as a support for and hindrance against liberation; and restorative justice in higher education. 

• Anthology production:  The Acentos Review, a journal for the promotion and publication of Latinx arts, will be entering its 10th year in 2018.  I want to produce a 10 year anthology and also work on gathering an editorial board that can bring the review into new realms and editorial vision.  

• Production of a multidisciplinary arts exhibit from my poetic manuscript in progress:  only my eye did not grow back.  This work comes from my way of exploring blackness as an identity in and out of time; generational trauma;ecopoetics that is connected to mythologies, spiritualities and communities; explorations of the lyric; and transnational and translanguaging work.  The work explores all of this through the distinct lenses of 12 characters, extending from the work of my chapbook.  (I would need to travel to Cuba for research on one character and possibly historical archives in New York for others).  

• Work on a new chapbook of poems in the MAGA era.

Still working out the ideas, though.  You have to dream big, though, to make big things happen!  I also have to propose it and get it accepted!

#twt, #23of52, #52essays2017