2022 was supposed to be The Year of Poetry.
My actual stated goal for the year - oh, how I love stating goals for each year! - was "Reconnect with and Recommit to Creative Joy." But the biggest part of this was going to be immersing myself in poetry, because what could be more creatively joyous than that? I would read poetry, write poetry, and (gasp!) start submitting my poems for publication. And I would open the year by taking myself to Paris, because what better place to write poetry than in Paris?
I did take myself to Paris in January, but I wrote more blog posts and journal entries than poems while I was there, and also worked on revisions of a middle-grade novel. In February, however, I luxuriated in the online Poem-a-Day group run by brilliant and beloved poet Molly Fisk, and I forced myself to submit just a few poems to just a few places. And two of them got accepted by the Sunlight Press - and they even agreed to pay me money for them. Actual money for being a poet!!!
But then in March, I got . . . distracted. Instead of falling ever more deeply in love with poetry, I fell in love... with a man. Who fell in love with me. And then all I cared about for the rest of the year, pretty much, was making a new life with him - though I have to say that nobody on earth could be more supportive of me as a writer than he has been.
I did keep on writing poetry - mainly love poems to him, of course. And I also (mostly) honored my life-long hour-a-day commitment to write (see the name of this blog!) and am close to finishing a full draft of another middle-grade novel which may be my magnus opus or may be an unpublishable dud. Who knows? Who cares? I wrote it with such joy that I can report that for the first time in my writing life I truly cared more about the process than the product. Being so deeply in love has proved transformative for me in many ways!
I did Molly's Poem-a-Day group again in June and also in October - what a remarkable community of poets she has created and nourished! I also did a ZOOM each month with my friend Jacqueline Jules, a well-published poet whose poems I adore. In each session we critique three poems by each of us - what an insightful and encouraging critic she is!
What I did NOT do was continue to submit poems. It just seemed like so much trouble, so much bother. Wasn't writing them enough? Wasn't it enough just to put words on paper, share them with my new true love, and with Jackie, and with the Poem-a-Day folks? Well, yes. But to be a writer, for better or worse, is to want to connect with readers. And publication - I might as well admit it - is just so satisfying!
So I'm pleased to report that those two poems accepted by Sunlight Press back in the spring are now published - TODAY! Here's the link should you care to take a peek. Maybe 2023 will be the year when I get really serious about not only writing but publishing poetry - could there be a chapbook in my future? But today I'm just happy that both love AND poetry have been part of my life in 2022.
