November 🌑 museletter
Poetic musings, updates, and community news on the new moons.
Earthly and Etheric Community
Hello from the teem of mid-autumn, happy November and happy cross-quarter day. I’m writing beneath a little string of dried roses above my desk, looking at the Ten of Cups tarot card. When I sat earlier this week for my Monday ritual of pulling a card, I was admittedly buzzy, tip-toeing around nervousness for the then-upcoming book launch, deep in consideration for how to most authentically celebrate What Blooms while also uplifting the incredible poetic community it was made within. How to hold the difficult and vulnerable alongside the wonder and hope? How to allow this book to be received while also carving space for other poets’ voices to ring out? Then this card came through and the message was (laughably) clear—just to trust and bask in the joy of community, to be humbled in its overflow.
Underlying my personal practice is the firm belief that art, that poetry, wants to be witnessed in communal space with others. While I think that it is crucial to spend time absorbing whatever art beckons you in solitude, I also think that we’re able to access new layers of potency when we gather together in a room and share in the tangible force that is being collectively created. When offered aloud, poetry (all art) becomes an avenue through which vulnerability transmutes into courage, wherein the witnessing of someone else’s creativity in real space can strike the chords of greater connectivity.
It is because of this earthly community of artists and weirdos (I say this lovingly) and deeply feeling people that I’m able to do any of the work that calls me; because I am constantly inspired by the bravery and heart required to share something truly, something from the depth, from the soul. Buoyed by my fellow creatives, I am able to better receive the support of the “etheric” community as well—the trails of influence left by artistic ancestors, the energetic nudges from the moon and the seasons’s shifts, the sometimes absurdly poignant reminders that spring from a pile of tarot cards… and so on.
As this month opens, may I sit down next to you in spirit and consider how we fill our cups and what we fill them with. May we consider what we’ll need—in an earthly and etheric sense—to continue the work of our individual lives, knowing it will inevitably ripple out into the whole. May we be generous when our cups are full, and open to receive when we are in need of support.
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A note of gratitude ~
My deep thanks to everyone who showed up in person on Wednesday to celebrate poetry and the birthday of What Blooms in the Dark; to Common Area Maintenance for providing us with a beautiful space; to the amazing artists that shared their work alongside me. My deep thanks to everyone who has bought a book, near and far, or has just been with me in any sense as I’ve meandered along my poetic journey. My cup is full, and I intend to keep this fullness circulating.
In the Orbit…
PDX ~ A week from today on November 8th, Mindy Nettifee and I will be giving a special reading together at Mother Foucault’s Bookshop. Mindy has been one of the most influential poets in my practice since I discovered her work over eight years ago. She is the author of three books of poetry (a Write Bloody author, and original Moon Tide author), and writer of the beautiful and wise publication In the River of What's Happening Now. Her book on poetic practice, Glitter in the Blood, is one I revisit every single year for its evergreen prompts and rituals. If you’re in Portland, please join us for a connective, conversational evening of poetry and ancestral communing. In general, I hope you delve into her work, as it is truly some of the strongest of our generation.
Musician Ran Park and I recently released a collaborative EP, Plunge, which weaves together poetry and original piano compositions, created in conversation with the cycles of nature in the Pacific Northwest. Ran’s music has been a loving backdrop to much of my writing practice—hers are compositions that never cease to lull me into a sense of holding and being held. Ran is also a diligent community organizer, and has recently created a Community Call for indexing resources for political education, action, and material change for Palestinian liberation, which will be compiled and printed in a zine as a part of a fundraising event in December. I am currently working on compiling poetic voices in service of this, and you are invited to participate in this crowd-sourced index, emailing any resources you have to the organizers at webspinners.proton.me.
As always, thank you for being with me in community, here and otherwise.
‘Til the next moon ~
