I think the brief sweet spot of travel is coming to an end. At least for now. Things have been absurdly busy since returning from vacation. I am super stoked to share that I've had a poem accepted to Muzzle for this fall, which was a massive goal of mine this summer. I've started doing some editing work on the side, and there is an oppotunity to release another collection sooner rather than later. I'm so endlessly thankful to be a writer. More big(bigger, biggest?) news coming in the not-distant future. For now it's back to all sorts of grinds. Here's to momentum. Oh and nature. Here's to nature as well because she's been knocking my socks off.

Leaving for vacation tomorrow and excited to completely unplug for the duration of it. I'm taking five books and a stack of poems to edit. Social media, work, news--my brain is oversaturated and I'm very much looking forward to stepping away. I have two new book projects in the works that require my undivided attention. I've got an ocean to be in the presence of. Also! I have a reading next Tuesday. I'm honored to once again be a part of the Hemingways summer reading series. This year is a bit different since it's virtual. Link to register is on my upcoming events page by the way.

I'm down to 1 book left in my first print run. The rest have all been sold/spoken for, and it feels so surreal and exciting to say that. My words have found their way to the Netherlands, Canada, South Africa, England, the west and east coast of the US and to a smattering of cities in between. I've received photos of it on beds, in open palms, on a stack of other beloved books. It feels like I've sent out bits of love and the love has returned to me in tiny, beautiful ways. I'm so grateful. For all of it. I was catching up with my dear friend Joseph via video chat today and expressed to him how I've been feeling both proud and guilty. Proud of myself for working so hard the past few months, for fully immersing myself in the hard work that comes with diving into one's craft. And guilty because of this busy-ness. I'm used to being someone who gives a lot of time to checking in on others, and lately I've felt more pulled away from that than usual. It's ...

Renee and I were joking today, about being busy--how if things to do are things being carried then I'm using both hands, both feet, all my teeth, and a swaying stack of tea cups clatter balanced on my head. The month of May, an exquisite tumbling of thing after thing after thing. My birthday is my new year, and for each one I like to reflect heavily. I usually write up something in this space to honor it, but this time I didn't have just that: time. I kept the reflecting more on the quiet side, staring off into a space a lot on the actual day. My love and I were married 9 days before it so I felt entirely surrounded by sweetness. Truly a gorgeous month. May also marked the month I started my role as a teaching assistant in a fairly intense writing workshop. I'm feeling particularly proud of grinding for this position--last fall I took the workshop as a student for the first time. This helped push me to finish my book--huge victory. I took it again in the first month of 202...

Acknowledge the lump of clay on the pottery wheel for what it is: a lump, full of too much and unformed. You hands work it into shape, your hands work it into collapsing. Your hands build again. You make too much. Things get messy. Maybe a vase with a Pisa Tower's belly, or a mug sprouting handles unti it is spider. We are too precious about these first moments of possibility. That is the first thing I stress to other poets. You cannot be precious about the first draft. You cannot expect a body with all of its bones and sinew, ready to run. Resist the urge to immediately abandon these fragments. You may not use all of these things. You may build it all and need only a tooth. Or a vein. You may only have a head, the thick of thigh, or if you're lucky, a heart--bloody and rolling.

Last night, my inksister and I talked for well over an hour. Our talks always start on how we are feeling/what we are doing/tiny&big updates and then we leave the path and wind through the woods and waters of talking writing and craft, conflict and love. There is always love like there is always weather. Surrounding and threading through. These talks are always so healing and helpful, and the way I miss her is a mountain crowding my heart. This time we discussed her memoir and my new role in a writing workshop as a TA-in-training. One thing I love about our talks is that we give one another room to speak. In the past I've been fairly awful at the allowance of space in conversation. The past few years I've changed how I view interactions--how they are moments worthy of quiet as much as they are noise, how listening is not waiting to speak, is never waiting to speak. To feel in the presence of my loved ones that I am fine never uttering a word again if it means listening to ...

So much of writing is reading, researching. This week, I've been poring over my own archives as I cobble together an outline for the next book. My own archives include twenty-one years of journaling--not straight through, not always consistently, but there is something to show for every year between then and now and that is something. I've done this before--going back and perusing. But never all the way through. Never in this place in time, and so it feels all new again. And alongside all the journaling are poems, which at times reveal more than we intend. What was once an amusing exercise now feels notably more emotional. To read back through all of these versions of self, to walk the path while knowing where it goes(or where it doesn't)...I am overwhelmed with what remained and what changed. All of it. I am both embarassed and intrigued by my youth--my rambling telling of it, how some things were given play-by-play and some were too full to recount it. Instead, I would j...