I did some things this year! More specifically, I was lucky enough to do some writing-related things that I’m really proud of, so I thought I’d write a quick post highlighting my favourite pieces that got published during 2019. I hope you enjoy—and if you’re curious about the music I loved this year, you can check out my year-end playlist as well!
Honey & Lime Lit
My first publication this year—and my first since winning the CBC Poetry Prize—was a pair of poems in Issue 2 of Honey & Lime Lit, a publication that I’ve followed and loved since its inception. It was very strange and very special to hold a journal with my work in it for the first time, and I’m grateful to Honey & Lime for being so lovely to work with during the submission process.
“how do you tell someone you’ve written a poem about them?” was a question I got during a Q&A with a class of elementary schoolers. I didn’t know how to answer in the moment, but I was writing a poem in my head as soon as I left the room.
I wrote “six months and counting” around a line that I borrowed from a poem called “Late” by my wonderfully talented friend, Isabella. This tribute to her work and to my dog Luna, who was about six months old when I wrote it, is definitely one of my favourites from the year.
PRISM international
My poem “Elegy for Opportunity” was published in PRISM international Issue 57.4. Unfortunately, this ode to a fallen space robot is only available in print (although if you really want to read it, I’d be happy to send it over to you!).
I originally wrote this poem for a poetry course at SFU and I’m really happy that it got a life outside of academia.
RIP, Opportunity. Thank you for sharing your life with us.
my (small press) writing day
Huge thanks to Rob for reaching out and asking me to contribute to his ongoing “small press writing day” series! Writing this blog post was the most fun I’ve had working on a project all year. I got to really dig into my writing process, if you can call it that, and even explored some of my feelings around graduating university and the uncertainty of diving into the “real world”. I think that future me will enjoy looking back on this piece and the very specific time in my life that it captures.
talking about strawberries all of the time
I like my pair of poems in Issue 3 of talking about strawberries because the two pieces contrast with one another on a surface level, but I actually wrote them both about different shades of heartbreak.
One of the things I sometimes find myself doing is taking painful or uncomfortable feelings and then writing about them as if they stemmed from a bad breakup. “artistic license” was an attempt at just that, and it also came paired with one of the only playlists I created this year.
“rattle on home” is a poem that I wrote late last year and completely forgot about until I found it floating around in one of my Word documents. You know when you love someone so much that you convince yourself you’d be happy with any kind of relationship, romantic or not, as long as they were in your life? Yeah, that.
Maisonneuve
It seems fitting that the last poem I published this year, “the science of holding on,” is about not wanting to move forward in time. I’ve been thinking about change and unrest a lot lately, about how relationships can shift and bend and grow in both exciting and unexpected ways. I’ve also been thinking about how blessed I am to have incredible people in my life, and how scary it is that they might not be in my life forever.
“the science of holding on” came out of those wonderings, and I think it’s a fitting summary for my year. I’m nervous about what the future will bring, but determined to walk into it holding tight to the people I love.
See you in 2020!
