The Next Chapter

It’s April so I’m writing a poem a day in honor of National Poetry Month. As I penned my second poem this evening, I realized I never went over the poems I wrote last April. Then I remembered that I’d written a poem a day for November as well…and then I found a bunch of “loosies” in my computer’s poetry folder…so I spent a couple of hours this evening pasting them into a single document and now I’ve got over a hundred poems to review! I’ve been posting poems on social media as well but it feels wrong using “old” poems when I have so much new/unfinished/published work lying around. Moonwalking comes out in about a week but so far I’ve only shared one concrete poem for Pi Day last month. I also read that poem for a virtual talk I gave at a local school last week and a student immediately asked where she could get the book…I hope our verse novel has that effect on other young readers. Poetry is more accessible for a lot of students and our book combines verse, music, and fine art—there are a lot of entry points for librarians and educators to exploit. Lyn and I will be talking about our book with Baltimore librarian Deb Taylor on April 13; you can register at the Politics & Prose website. We’ll also be presenting at the Gaithersburg Book Festival on May 14; I haven’t seen Lyn since the pandemic so it’ll be nice to be on stage together for to discuss our collaboration. Tickets for the event at the Ashland Theater in VA are now available and I spoke to a reporter from the Richmond Times-Dispatch yesterday; she thinks the event will draw quite a crowd and did a nice write-up in today’s paper. I’ll conduct my first in-person school visit while I’m in Richmond, which should be interesting. These students lost their school in a fire not too long ago so I hope we can work together to write some poems to heal their hearts.

Last week I found out that my play wasn’t accepted into a local development program. I was disappointed but also grateful that the rejection made it easier to close that chapter of my writing life. The next day I spent the morning at the Art Institute and then walked back to the South Side. It sure didn’t feel like spring weather-wise, but my heart felt full again and I know I’m ready to write. The play will just go back in its drawer for the time being. My shadow puppet workshop starts on Monday; I’ve got a long list of materials to purchase so that’s tomorrow’s task. Random House came back with a better offer so hopefully we’ll seal the deal and then I’ll need to get started on Book #5. It’s not the ideal time to start sifting through a hundred poems but I’ll try to work on a few each day this month. Write a poem, post a poem, revise a poem. That’s doable for 30 days, right? At the end of my wonderful conversation with Shelagh Rogers last month, she asked me to recite a stanza from A Place Inside of Me but most of our conversation was about The Witch’s Apprentice. You can listen to the segment here. I’ve got an in-person event just outside of Toronto scheduled for September. Will the pandemic be under control by then? Who knows. But I haven’t crossed the border since January 2020 and hope I can finally connect with family and friends in the GTA.