notes on wild(ish)
With WILD(ISH) landing in the world this week, I've been thinking about how this feels like the first book in a while that isn't, specifically or more generally about grief, even though it swims around us and within us every time we open a news page or or scroll on our phones. I feel those poems are coming, but I don't know what they look like yet, but here, in this new book, there is a certain feral energy I am feeling now. The first book that felt leaden with grief was FEED, my first self-publishing adventure in 2021, that contained a lot of poems about mothers in the wake of losing my own. COLLAPSOLOGIES, which followed in 2023, was more about societal grief, for covid, for our (woefully innacurate) view of humanity and capitalism, for the things and people lost to all of these. While GRANATA was less so, RUINPORN was about rebuilding and loss in general--for people, for relationships, for homes, and for ways of being and existing in the creative world that had to be shed to move forward.
This new book feels a little more like something older I would have written pre-2020. The poems were actually written sometimes between late 2023 and this January (it includes my the woods series, that were written as part of my advent project last December. It includes the Alice poems I wrote, the text elements of the ghost box, the villains poems that are about nature and humanity and their notions of good and evil. So a less depressing but still spooky and delightful voyage in and out of the forest.
I had not intended to release it this early and planned, even though I had a final draft ready in March, to wait til the fall, likely October during the high horror holy month. But given the chaos of the world and possibly rising print costs, I went ahead and made it happen now so I could stock up on copies for the summer, a glorious luxury of setting my own timelines and releases. Since my layout skills get better with each book (and this one was about 80 percent prose poems) it was easier to shorten the timeline on it once I had those things ironed out. (The cover I've had in a folder since last year.) I am till in the midst of working on some fun things for the book's release, like trailers and video poems and snippets of poems, which are coming in the next week so keep an eye out for those on socials.
As for what's next, there is another collection that I may have ready by this coming winter, as well as small monthly e-bites of projects that mix visuals and texts (including these Greek-inspired pieces that I am just finishing up this week.
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