Carolee Bennett –> poet. artist. crankypants.
If you want to be a writer, absolutely surround yourself with people who admire and support what you’re doing. But understand it starts with you. You have to care. You have to take care. You have to be there for the work and for yourself.
As an invitation for you to give them a chance — as a reader and/or writer — I thought I’d share examples of inventive poetry forms, along with some of what I’ve learned by digging into these wild, wonderful poems.
I’ve embraced productivity as a synonym for success for so long that it’s hard now to accept my desire for something else in its place.
I just finished re-reading* Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret in the context of a manuscript I’m working on in which the speaker confides in and seeks guidance from an alter ego named Gertie. I’m not 100% convinced I can pull it off, but I’m following it where it goes and using my writing journals to get me there.
I fall in love with some detail at each house: a cluster of dwarfs like my mom painted one year in a ceramics class; a blue canoe, upside down; children’s drawings in a front window, including a crayon portrait of a cat named Serenity. Think I can get away with that in a poem?
A friend calls this “writing weather.” I guess that’s one way to get through dark, cold, snowy winter. Willie Nelson helps. Mimosas, too.
For a poet, I think I’m late to the nesting and writing stages of coronavirus grief. But thanks to a cat, perimenopause and Natalie Goldberg, I’m here now.