Photo: “Guards Walkway” from the Marathon and District Historical Society and Museum
The COVID years were hard.
But, as life during the pandemic became normalized, I was lucky to enjoy a few months of creativity. Living with uncertainty, turning inward, and embracing my bubble enabled me to explore different modes of expression. I felt my scholar’s voice shrinking, and a much more expressive one emerging. Around this time, Kerry and I developed the graphic-novel-academic-monograph hybrid concept that would become our Beneath the Red Umbrella: Sex and Solidarity (finally under review!). I wrote a lot. I started experimenting with creative non-fiction and fiction. I took a poetry course with Rob Taylor, from whom I learned about prose poetry and found poetry. I submitted a piece to an issue of the Capilano Review edited by Phanuel Antwi and Junie Désil, and lucked out. They produced a stunning collection of poems and visual art, and I got to be a part of it.
Please take a look at the Weather Issue (3.45 Winter 2021) in its entirety. Here’s the issue with my poem, “The Outside War,” excerpted:
Thanks for reading y’all!