The world looks still damp, like me and my dog after getting ourselves caught in a midsummer-morning cloudburst. The writing circles and other literary events I used to organize before the pandemic are still on my mind. I only wanted it to rain poetry.
Guiding creativity as work, as vocation, as dharma, is on my mind, perched in my hair like a damp pair of sunglasses.
Maybe you study their writing for hints of energy, oddity, beauty, proof that writing is inherently imperfect—not practiced and published, trapped in some book, but an ongoing attempt, rife with revision.
Felicia Rose Chavez, The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop
And even though I’m not running anything right now and even though River River is wrapping up as an organization, I feel that the work that its board members and I did running a completely independent, literary arts group pushed the culture a little bit ahead of the curve. Open generative writing circles abound now. Many local workshops and writers groups shout that they encourage diverse voices, as I have done from the start.
My teaching will continue, though plans are a bit cloudy at the moment. Nyack Library and the Edward Hopper House—details coming soon. I promise, the seeds of the next phase are getting a good watering.
poet | artist 