Today is my chapbook, Dancing Backwards Towards Pluperfect’s first birthday. The year has flown by quickly and much has happened both in my book life, my real life, and in America’s life, not to mention the upheaval everywhere.
There were disappointments, and, of course Taylor Swift wouldn’t Swift my book because I’m not the right kind of female/non-binary queer person, whatever, but something way better happened, it was shortlisted for a Lammy award, which was the most I could hope for for it considering it is a chapbook and there are not lots of contests to submit it to, but also, my writing is just not contest writing (usually). I don’t fit in, but also, I don’t want to.
I’ve been reflecting on the book lately, in part due to the birthday, but also because of certain life events that seemed to coincide with issues explored in this book and my other work.
One of the things touched upon in the book is abuse, domestic abuse, sexual abuse, and other implied abuses. While I consider this somewhat auto fiction(poetry), of course, some of it was shaped by my experience, and some of it was very anecdotal, or at least riffed off real life…
Many of my family members are addicts or were addicts because many of them are gone, including my cousin who died of an overdose this year, leaving offspring both motherless and fatherless. Her ex-boyfriend died under mysterious (probably drug related) circumstances also. It was a very heartbreaking death and a difficult year, but other life events seem to point to a chapter of my life closing in a way that parallels my writing. For one, two abusers in my family left this plane recently, and the third and probably most dangerous was just committed to a dementia center. And while I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, my younger relatives stand a better chance of healing and surviving, and I’m just going to say it, the world got a bit safer, and while things continue to be difficult for me in many ways, and the filth that is our government continues to dismantle anything that remotely worked in our government, I’m moving through this passage with a strange hope and a LOT lighter than I was a couple weeks ago as I realize I’m completing a difficult transit and entering a new phase of life. I hope to see you on the other side of it. And thank you for supporting me, my chapbook, and my writing… I don’t think lit people are interested in talking about book publishing as life passages, but, for me, it’s definitely a part of it. There’s no tenure committee chomping at the bit for my stuff in my humble, non-academic existence (and I’m glad, to be truthful). This is just life hanging here in these words.
Hang in there… Keep writing. Do friendship well. Hold your loved ones close. More soon.
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