Second spring
I have a confession to make. I’m not very good at stopping, taking stock of how I’ve grown.
While the Earth revolved around the sun, my debut collection (long-germinated and watered) shot up and out in 2023. The poems flowered and fruited with readers. I was invited to bring its seeds and shoots to new places, and hoped for fertile, friendly soil. I met many gardeners and gatherers of poetry, that rich ecosystem of words and wildness.
Experienced poets I met along the way reassured me that it’s natural to fall fallow and not write after your book comes out. I both trusted in them and anxiously peered around at the ground, wondering if anything would ever germinate again. Winter’s crispness gave me to the soil’s rest and I dug down, thinking about water tables, burrowing frogs and perenial roots.
So what’s happening now? I am writing again, in short hops and hurries. I’m prioritising pauses, trying not to think too hard about what comes next. I’m reminding myself that my poems are not products I take to market. Each one starts as a conversation with myself, an exploration, and all I can hope is that I find other poems and poets to have head-to-hearts with. It’s going to be inspiring and intoxicating. It is already.