Cross-reference and re-direct

I am thinking I shall stick to blogging daily in my poetry blog, and keep this one for less frequent, and more general, scribbles. So invisible and non-existent reader, SEE: thepracticalpoet.blogspot.com for diurnal fare.

Thank you ever so much.

How to How to

 Today's poetry prompt was to write poem that is a "how to" about writing a poem. I had fun with it, using the metaphor of painting a room (stanza). 

Pushing past the little "I can't" voice is becoming a daily habit. Self-doubt and mini bouts of despair aren't lessening. And while having a deadline - such as tonight's zoom poetry critique group - sometimes helps, there are also times when it makes it worse. But overcoming that insecurity and those niggling shame-laden intrusive thoughts is not lessening, either. 

What really makes a difference? Coffee. (Or, what I like to call "the drug of optimism.") I have given up a lot of things in my diet. But coffee has, so far, been more helpful than hurtful. Coffee can stay.

How it Works

A patron wants to read an art magazine that we no longer carry, so I suggest we check our Overdrive/Libby digital magazine options - hundreds of titles - and I search by subject in their magazine catalog, but there is only 1 entry listed as having a subject "Art." So I click on it, and it's Y Wawr. Which is Welsh. Weird, right? Not if you're me. 

And already...

I see that it will behoove me to write in the morning, or at least in the evening before I have "shut down" for the day. Or I shall have to overcome this idea that I shut down at dark. Because the push to blog daily, when I am feeling heavy and dumb, takes the joy out of the act of composition.

I say that, and yet, even writing this, I am happy. And the days are longer. So many blessings. 

Speaking of which, I'm off to write in the other blog about language and the friends who show they understand you because they understand your love of it... 

Hello, April

 [This post can also be found in my poetry blog.]

This month may bring its cruelties, but I have plans. Not so much to overcome adversity, but to offset the darkness in the world with whatever tiny flicker of light I can bring to my spot on the globe. Even that sounds so chock full of hubris, I should be ashamed to write it.

I am pathologically optimistic - it's a coping mechanism that rides shot-gun to residual cynicism - and so I have these intentions: I intend to write a poem a day - or a draft of one, or a start. Even a few lines. Even a haiku. I hope to submit poetry to journals, at least once a week - which is a step back from the daily practice in previous Aprils. And I expect myself to blog, daily. While I'm at it, I'm eschewing processed food and meat and most dairy. Because why not set the bar so high I'll get a crick in my neck trying to see it? 

None of these things will make the world a better place. But they won't, I don't think, make it any worse. And there is something to be said for being present and having purpose, and it will take focus and reprioritization to accomplish these goals. What I'll have to drop are habits that fritter away my time and abuse my body. So there's that. Thanks for the read. 

A Blog Post Stolen from The Practical Poet

I see that in late October, I started a post in which I asked myself whether I would participate in Nanowrimo in 2021. I didn't publish the post, but I did write 50,000 words towards a memoir in November. 

And now, I've updated my poetry-related blog with a few tidbits of news and thought it would be a good idea to post that information here as well, just to keep this site a bit more current. 

I'm very excited to say that last month, I heard from Stephen Reichert of Smartish Pace that they'll be publishing a couple of my poems in their next issue. I'm so grateful to have these particular pieces in print, as they're especially meaningful for me and I'd wanted them to have a home. 

The news arrived on the afternoon of a day when I had spent an hour or so before work writing. I don't usually fit that much time in before 8am, but when I do, it seems that I am very often rewarded with some kind of gesture from the universe. A message (or at least, I'll take it that way) to carry on with this work that brings me so much happiness. 

Lately, I've been listening to Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald, and enjoying it even more than H is for Hawk. I love this book. It inspires me to want, almost desperately at moments, to be a writer of personal essays or of what I believe might be called creative non-fiction these days. A memoir that is in prose but with all the beauty and insight of the best poetry. 

I also just finished Travels in an Old Tongue, Pamela Petro's book about traveling the world as an American Welsh-learner, trying to speak only Welsh (or as much Welsh as possible) in every continent she visited. Everything she said about Wales and the Welsh language, culture, and people - wherever they were in the world - resonated with me profoundly. I've spent forty years keenly interested, if not obsessed, with Wales and Welsh, so to read her felt like meeting a kindred spirit. I just ordered and received her latest book, The Long Field, and I am looking forward to digging in to it as soon as I've finished the latest titles for our library's February book discussions.