July Love Letter
Why do I do this to myself?
Hello there my beautiful readers,
Like I tend to do, I’ve decided to publish something that has no commercial value or even any interest. No one has ever asked me to do this. I just got a wild hair to do it, so I am doing it. Is anyone surprised? No?
This photo is of 50 blackout poems that tell a story of a young couple who falls in love, starts a family, disconnects, and reconnects. (It is also a photo of my coffee table which desperately needs repainting.)
It came out of nearly 175 blackout poems that I’ve made this year.
There is so much paper all over my house, it is ridiculous. The more I looked, the more poems I found, and now I have so many blackout poems that I don’t know what to do with all of them.
But I am especially excited about how this set of poems about love and family turned out.
I am planning on adding some mixed media collage to at least certain poems. Maybe all of them? Or maybe just half? I know next to nothing about how this is all going to turn out but GUESS WHAT THAT’S ART. Y’all are with me on the journey.
Aside from that exciting bit of news, my poem “Opening Night Tickets for Sale” has been included in Clever Fox Literary Magazine’s latest issue! It is a never-before-seen poem, and I’m pretty proud of it. If you click the link above it will take you to the current issue, and you’ll find my poem on page 14.
Also, my retreat is filled up! I am so excited to party (a.k.a. write!) with a group of fantastic women in the mountains in March!
LISTENING/WATCHING/READING/WRITING
LISTENING:
I started listening to a podcast called Scamanda. It’s about a woman who says she has cancer and begins documenting her journey, but there’s more to the story than it seems (dun dun DUN!) I’m still in the first couple of episodes, and it’s fascinating.
WATCHING:
Jared and I watched The Lincoln Lawyer, which I find fun but pretty unrealistic. Still I am excited to see the second half when it’s released. BUT MOST IMPORTATNT OF ALL (I’m so excited I can’t even TYPE.) is Joe Pickett. This show is EVERYTHING. You can tell from the capslock that I am hyped. It has dirty cops, vigilantes, strong women, including a SAHM who is also a lawyer?! Joe is trying to process his emotions about the things that happened in season one as well as his childhood trauma all while chasing a serial killer! It is quality intrigue and I am on pins and needles every Sunday night.
READING:
I have been listening to Maggie Smith’s memoir You Could Make This Place Beautiful again. I don’t know why I cannot get enough of it. It’s so sad, but also I resonate with parts of it. She questions her work as a wife and mom and compares it to her career as a writer and poet. The difference for me is that my husband is a very good support and does not seem to resent me for fulfilling my creative dreams. (Her husband was a playwright-turned-lawyer and was seemingly very unfulfilled.) I appreciate how she said the memoir wasn’t a tell-all but a tell-mine because there would always be something she didn’t know or understand. Listening to it feels like a bruise you keep touching just to see if it still hurts.
I finally bit the bullet and bought the box set of A Court of Thorns and Roses. I’ve listened to the first two, but I started reading the third earlier this week. I read the third in two days. At first I was having a hard time remembering details from the first two books, but that might be because I listened to them rather than read them? I’m not sure, but I easily got caught up! A Court of Wings and Ruin is very heavy on political intrigue in Prythian. Don’t worry, there’s still romance too :) However, if you don’t like spicy books, this series is not for you.
WRITING:
I have been really racking up the word count in The River Woman Project! I’m at over 17k words! I can’t believe I’ve written so much. For a long time, I really thought this was something I was not capable of doing. IT’S SO MANY WORDS.
I am excited about how things are turning out. The whole idea is that there is a pretty strong magical realism vein that runs through it, and that has been so fun to figure out how I want that to work. It’s been really challenging, but the kind of challenging that makes you feel like you can do pretty much anything.
What are y’all working on? Whatever it is, you can do it!
Love,
Tristan
P.S. I will keep y’all posted on all the fun details about the retreat as they come up, as well as if any open spaces become available.