April showers
National Poetry Month! Native Plant Nursery Opening!
Hi all,
I finally feel the shift into spring! I finally feel like I am on the other side of this frankly very difficult winter!
As I write, yesterday was the opening of the native plant nursery I’m running. It was so busy! So many friends and neighbors came out. I surprised myself with how much I know about our plants, and was able to guide people in terms of what to choose and why, even as my mentor ended up being sick at the last second and I led the charge for the whole event. We put plants I started from seed into the raised bed: beans and tomatoes and nasturtium and peppers and sunflowers. I learned about the history of the site from someone who used to work there, and found out the woman who had the vision for and started the original farm was gay <3 And although there is a long and complex history there, I’m thinking about what it meant to be a gay woman in Philly in the 2000s starting a verdant urban farm on what used to be a brownfield site. I’m thinking about how long I’ve prayed on, dreamed about, asked questions of how I can be a part of a place and stay a long time! It was overwhelming to feel so much happiness, to grow plants just a couple blocks from where I also live, and to get to celebrate and share that. Very emotional day for Sara Mae!
This is coming as I am also waiting to hear back from various writing fellowships, grants, residencies. I have been texting and calling writing friends a lot lately to try and figure out how to not be so completely tortured in the waiting, but alas. I can’t go a day it seems without sort of looking up at the ceiling and groaning for awhile. The only antidote is continuing to turn back to being present in my everyday life. I got rejected from the Colgate fellowship, and that was April 1st, so I decided to do a 30/30—write 30 poems in 30 days—to feel more connected to poetry again. I also have a deadline to finish another draft of my novel before end of May. And! We had our band writing retreat last weekend and made a tonnnnnnn of progress on Good Night Hot Clown, like this is the moment I’ve been waiting for with that album, where I really feel like I’m in it with the guys. It’s so much fun to have the bones of a song figured out and to get to make production choices together. We even have a drafted order of songs for the album and it is taking all my restraint not to post it here but that will be a fun reveal later on. I gotta leave SOMETHING to the imagination !!! I can tell you some banjo and mandolin are making an appearance, we’ve got one song that sort of feels like what if The Noisy did Andy Shauf, and I’m being challenged to use my head voice every once in awhile! In a way that sounds sort of Happy Birthday Mister President. It’s wonderful to feel real momentum and newness in my music life.
I have been asking a lot the last month how I can shed that winter stagnancy, and I’ve noticed a shift since I started writing poetry again every day. That day I got rejected from Colgate, I had met with one of my bosses at the nursery and we walked to the Delaware River together, and it was warm and breezy, and afterwards I met Alex at our corner bar and was reading in between looking up at the Artemis II launch on the bar TV (they played “Rocket Man” when it took off.) and Sam asked me to go to to Perfume Genius that night, and it was a stripped down set at the church, and Sam and I were by the back window and we could hear it when the big rain started and the cool air was coming in. It was a very ~Walt Whitman~ day, very ~ecstatic tradition~ as my friend Gabriel always talks with me about, how immense joy and grief are wrapped up in each other. As I’m flailing in the uncertainty of my path forward in writing (other than working every single day in the gaps I can find) I’m also finding gravity in my life in Philly in a way I’ve wanted for years.
I saw a post around this time where someone was meditating on not getting into graduate school. They were speaking to a lack of coherence in a way that reallllllllly resonated with me, that although I know I have my daily practice and I’m lucky for the support of my friends, sometimes balancing poetry, fiction and music also means I can feel a little directionless, and things do just take longer than I would like them to. The writing was getting at how badly I just want my path to make sense! Rather than being many periods of instability and abrupt change.
Zenaida’s new moon reading for me for the next cycle is feeling particularly prescient:
Aries New Moon (April 17-May 16) 7 of pentacles
You have accomplished so much, the changes, improvements and successes you have achieved are worth acknowledging! It is easy to constantly be seeking the next milestone. For that, patience is needed. Be like the farmer in the card, admiring all his hard work and waiting for the ultimate reward. You have done all you can to try and bring a dream or intention into fruition and you have to wait for a response if the seeds you have planted will germinate to become something nourishing. Signs are positive!
I told Alex about all the Noisy shows I have coming up and he had no idea, and lovingly scolded me that I need to ruminate on my successes more. Sometimes I scold myself because I am like maybe I’m being ungrateful for what I have, what am I so antsy for, but I don’t think that’s exactly true. I think sometimes I miss the forest for the trees a little bit when it comes to success in writing. Like what do I actually mean by hoping for success? What would truly feel like a path forward that I don’t already have? I have more poetry readings here in the next month than I’ve ever had in Philly combined. And I have one of my biggest Noisy shows ever next week!!
4/15 - Poet’s Row feature at 48 Record Bar
4/20 - The Noisy at the Foundry
4/25 - Milk House Reading in Frederick, MD
4/28 - Personal Velocity Series at H&H Books
5/15 - Molly’s Bookstore poetry feature (and my birthday show! We shall be walking down the road to Ray’s Happy Birthday Bar afterwards! No flyer yet but I believe doors will be at 7pm.)
Other tidbits:
I found the mysterious piece I’ve needed to complete my wedding outfit look and I’m meeting with a local designer who is cutting me an amazing deal for it soon.
I read Open Throat by Henry Hoke this month and it made me want to write. It’s a novel written from the POV of a mountain lion living in the Hollywood Hills. It’s beautiful and so funny and sad. I read it in a day and loved every minute.
My friend Gabriel’s book was announced this week—he’s gonna get published with GRAYWOLF!! And I wanted to share one of his poems here.
I’m trying to get involved with different lit mags and stretch those muscles a little more. Even if I don’t get a fellowship I want to put myself in the way of talking about writing more regularly again.
I read this poem about ponies and loved it very much. Happy National Poetry Month :)
I tell myself every spring I will pull over on Christian Street to take a picture of the magnolias there and I never do but this year I DID!
Keep your fingers crossed for me this month as I move through this spring antsiness! I am so glad to have this big triumph of the nursery being open, and now onwards to more planting and watering. Hopefully next newsletter I’ll have even more good news to ruminate on !!!!!!
<3
Sara Mae
ily pookie im teaching your haunted duplex today <3