A. Anupama
It's a little bittersweet to think about how it is at the end of every semester — that mishmash of relief, pride, and sadness at wrapping up with a group of students. I'd be getting in the mood to grade a bunch of creative portfolios over the winter break if I were teaching. But I'm…
WordPress sends me an every-other-day reminder that it’s time to blog here. Okay, I guess I’m the one who set that reminder, but somehow I keep ignoring it, thinking no one is in any mood for poetry midst news of war, rising inflation, challenges to women’s health, election shenanigans, and now yet another horrific mass…
Here is a flat, seamless year’s end, in a pandemic seemingly without end. Given a lot of reflection, my hope has been to give it contour. Loss and hope weave themselves together, like threads in chambray melding into a single color. Love and anxiety as weft and warp conspire to drape us in silk. These…
I had forgotten about the way I kept “teaching shoes” in my car after this year-and-a-half in virtual classrooms. It’s so good to be with students, in living presence, and there’s no equivalent for it. Now that the school semester is fully underway, most of my thought and energy is in the lectures, discussions, assignments.…
What do butterflies say? If a child asked me that, I’d say “listen.” This past Sunday, my neighbor and I walked up the newly built section of trail that leads from Nyack Beach State Park to the Long Path, which climbs to the peak of Hook Mountain. We met a woman named Felicia, who teaches…
The clouds glance down and move off in great billows this afternoon, and I’m reviewing notes for the creative writing course I’ll be teaching again. It’s a busyness that I like, even though it’s really summer’s end when I do this. I had so many ideas at the beginning of summer, but now it’s all…
Given a few lines, a poem can sprout wing-like leaves, sip rain, bud and blossom with color. Tomorrow’s Instapoetry event in downtown Nyack means we’ll all probably write a poem or two, or more. Given some pause, a poem can accelerate beyond speed limits. Given a few conspirators, a poem can admire your very act…
My son’s supervisor at his summer internship in New Jersey is Indian, and suddenly my son says to me that he’d like to read more about India. His aim, I suppose, is to have more to talk about at work. But, being the ever-annoying poet-mom, I replied, “you can always know more about India, but…
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…
My middle-school homeschool students had a pool party today to celebrate the end of our year reading The Odyssey together. It was epic. They stood in the water scream-laughing about the crushes they dramatically recounted for each other from their pre-Covid schooldays. I was kicking myself: it never occurred to me to ask them to…
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