National Poetry Month
& The First Completed Writing Challenge!
April is nearing its end. It’s a beautiful Friday, and the rain is pouring softly outside my window. I’m proud of the week I’ve had, and I’m even more grateful to the folks who are helping me keep to my academic responsibilities.
It’s difficult for me to stay to a schedule. I’ll follow what’s determined on my Google Calendar (that is my brain and livelihood right there!) but it hardly remains the same week to week. This Monday won’t be like the next, or the one after that. Because of this, I haven’t ever completed a National Poetry Month writing challenge. Instead of writing everyday, I decided I would write when I could, and I would write in bursts. I would go a few days without writing but have a handful of small poems all written in one day. While I believe that everyone’s writing routine is different and by no means is one meant to crank out a “masterpiece” everyday, there is a beauty in setting aside time to sit with your craft.
As I try to lower my unintentional screentime (unintentional meaning scrolling through social media), it also helps to set aside time to read and tend to other avenues of my creativity. I’ve been drawing, keeping to my “artist dates” (as prescribed to one from The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron), and I’ve been working on a chapbook in poet, Sophia Dahlin’s, generative class, Writing Without Permission. I’m trying to make time for things that bring me joy. So, I’ve restarted my bookstagram posts (intentional Instagram and or Twitter time!) and shared a bookish post here.
And who knows? Maybe I’ll make a zine of the poems I wrote this month, not for promotion or anything, but to celebrate the accomplishment of tapping into creativity. My dear friend, mare, kaibigan (and pinsan!), comrade, and fellow poet, Maria Bolaños, once said to me that creating a “genius” work wasn’t the point. The point of our art is being able to experience something beyond us, something unnamable, and expressing it the best way we can. And amidst everything, I find our art a small (and only a part of a greater whole of actions we should be doing together as a community) resistance against American, Western fascism and imperialism. We can take our time with our art.
Our art is celebration.
Updates;
Where to buy my books:
You can purchase The Language of Unbreaking, my first full-length poetry collection with Sampaguita Press from Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon.
You can purchase my chapbook, In Defense Of, from Amazon, or if you send me a screenshot of a donation of at least $5 USD to a relief fund, GoFundMe, or organization of your choice, I will mail a copy to you free (within the stolen lands of Turtle Island, or unceded lands of the United States of America).
What I’m reading:
The Man with my Face by Jennifer Tseng
Black Bell by Alison C. Rollins
Storm #5 by Murewa Ayodele, among others!
What I’m writing:
wrapping up the 30 poem challenge for National Poetry Month
the last stretch of my critical essays!
my screenplay and two scripts
What I’m listening to:
Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge by My Chemical Romance
What I’m watching:
Senpai wa Otokonoko