Saturday and a book is brewing
Yesterday, one of the beautiful practices I engaged in was going to the greenhouse to spread out all the pages of poetry that I’ve been working on for the last few years. I had thought that I was not very productive. Yes, I had written for speaking engagements or occasional poems while teaching or attending a workshop, but the poems, lyric essays, nonfiction was very slim, I thought. In printing out all the pieces - there is a PRINTER HERE! - I discovered that I am over 50 pages in to a new book and that I have consistently been engaged with themes of ancestral knowing, attunement, and alignment as well as legacy creation, stewardship of land, history, and the future in the form of our children, and revelations of the hidden stories and every day resistance and liberation practices. I have also been obsessed with color and color theory, tapping into a creative spark, and self-affirmation and empowerment.
After doing some brief ordering, later that evening, I also started going through some of the archival images and two that stood out for me were the graduation program of my grandmother (who died just a year after she graduated from Benedict College. There’s a scholarship in her name now) and a photograph with me as a baby with my Aunt Stacey, who was such a beautiful person with a bright energy to her. She died when I was 15 and remains deeply missed within our family.
Where are we in today’s accountability project?
Yesterday my tasks for myself:
Tea and rest
Write 2 poems (Wrote 3 poems)
2 consultations
1 chapter of werewolf romance (Re-read a chapter of my first novel and decided to return to it today)
Acentos review .5 years (Completed 1 year)
Charcoal and oil pastel afternoon/evening (Did a fun little one of a robot for my son)
Laid out all the poems, short stories, and lyric essays that I have in the greenhouse to see where I might be in a new book. Did some ordering. It was a WONDERFUL discovery that I was over 50 pages into a new book.
Read a few essays from the Jericho Brown edited, How we do it: Black writers on craft, practice, and skill
Reviewed the archival pictures that I have and posted one of my grandparents’ home.
Applied for Tin House parents’ residency
Tasks for today
Tea and rest
Write 2 poems
1 consultation
Return to the greenhouse with additional poems
Work on the launch of Esperimento sul Respiro
Acentos Review anthology (1 year)
Apply for Dodge Poetry call
Apply for NEA
Send out some of the new poems for funsies
Werewolf romance outlining
Charcoal and oil pastel afternoon/evening
Clearly I’m being ambitious today, but we will see how it goes. If I get part of this done, even if it’s just tea and the greenhouse, I will celebrate with … stretching my body and dancing in the living room.
