1. Bob doesn’t like this blog’s subtitle. Are you deprecating yourself? he asks. Yes, I answer. My writing career will be tiny. It began in 2015. There will be no lifetime achievement award for me.
2. This year I intend to put together a second chapbook.
3. As a poet, my major themes include love/passion, nature, and family. I finally accepted that love may be my central subject. I fought it for years, preferring bigger topics. But a tiny career can focus on love.
4. I will begin two courses next week: “The Trees of our Lives,” with Claudia Castro Luna from Hugo House (six weeks), and “Comet of Stillness: A Short Course on the Poetry of W.S. Merwin,” with Victoria Chang and Matthew Zapruder from the Community of Writers (five weeks).
5. I love the classes and workshops I take through IWWG (the International Women Writers Guild) because my fellow students are so often wise, compassionate, and supportive. I feel bathed in acceptance there. Then possibility beckons. “Channelling Grief and Loss Poetry Workshop” with Sham-e-Ali Nayeem was like that. Reading and discussing “Lenox Hill” by Agha Shahid Ali was the highlight of my week. Form married to content. Form that moved the poem out to the universe and in to mother, in to Kashmir.
6. Trying to keep track of some of my reading, thinking, and writing here. Accepting that it’s a personal record. Not minding.
7. Blogger was much easier to use. Intuitive.