Our springtime drive-in outing yesterday was thwarted with a sudden profusion of snowfall this late in the year after virtually nothing much all winter. Of course, we'd already made it to McHenry and checked in at the hotel, so alas spent the evening not at the outdoor theatre as planned for opening night, but instead eating massive amounts of snacks in the hotel room with its little view over the snowy vista of the river and making our way through the first three John Wick movies neither of us had seen.
It's been a busy week that began with seeing The Penelopiad at the Goodman, which was just the sort of female epic I would have loved to have seen when I was in the midst of working on the Persephone poems. There were quite a few movie outings, including a French film where people inexplicably turned into animals (The Animal Kingdom), some monster-laden Korean sci-fi (The Host), and the remake Suspiria, which was as confusing and dream-like as I remember from watching it before. In between there were late night diner meals, lots of writing, and slow, but productive, mornings.
In this last week or so of March, I am gearing up for April, which seems odd to call a national poetry month, since every month is poetry month round here, but it gets an undue amount of attention each spring. April is always a month of note for me with my birthday and in general, just a new momentum as the weather changes and days get longer. I am still waffling over which of a few ideas for series I want to tackle to start off NaPoWriMo, which I always have mixed feelings on. Not the daily writing, of course, but more the daily posting, which feels like dropping a dime into a deep well and never hearing it hit bottom. I post a lot of work, usually after it's had some time to gel and gain its footing. Those new drafts can be rougher, and infinitely more vulnerable. And it's all shouting into a void, a void that gets more echoey during April. However, some of my favorite series have had a birth or been completed in Aprils past.
Today, after we got back, I spent some time making up the decor writing I took yesterday off from, then delved into making April's monthly zine, HOME IMPROVEMENTS (see cover above), which is mostly about grief and ghosts and how homes become haunted by both the living and the dead. The poems, which have collages, are also the center section of RUINPORN, which I will be properly pulling together later this year and probably sending out into the world in 2025. There is still another section that needs some more poems and more work, but it is already a longer book, even with just four parts.
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