A new year
The excitement of 2016 for my writing largely consisted of the publication of two pamphlets: Hometown (V. Press), a collection of flash fictions; and Scar (Shearsman), a single long poem exploring the effects of climate change on Illinois. Each has received a couple of reviews, and I hope more are still forthcoming. I wish more places reviewed pamphlets, but so it goes!
After having teaching relief that reduced my load in the 2015-16 academic year and completing much more writing as a result, I've found it difficult in this new academic year to find much time to write. To try to foster a new momentum, for January I'm writing a poem a day on average (some days I don't write anything, another day I might draft two). Here on the fifth, I already have drafts of six new poems, and it feels so good! I only hope that when I resume teaching next week I can keep it up. I think that's part of my motivation for this post: a public commitment!