A decade of words

Today is the decade birthday of Oh My Foes!

August 10th, 2011, I posted my first blog. Here it is, if you want to revisit it too. Honestly, I can't read it without the compulsion to go back and edit. 😂 

I started this blog to reconnect with my craft and myself. I occasionally forget it exists (object permanence is a thing for ADHD people, look it up) but I always find my way back. I've been writing in this blog longer than I've known most of my platonic and romantic relationships outside of blood family.

My candle burns at both ends;
    It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
    It gives a lovely light!

I chose to name my poem after Edna St. Vincent Millay's famous poem, First Fig, because it's me. I'm the candle. I'll be 39 next month, and I'd like to think I've been learning ways to regulate my burn, but it's probably more accurate to say that age and chronic illness have been forcing me to slow down. 

I had big plans for this anniversary. I wanted to throw a reading in the park and invite all my friends. I wanted to bake them cupcakes and share my poetry. But the Delta variant had other ideas. The rest of Missouri is out there pretending like we aren't the literal epicenter of this variant, but I'm not interested in assisting Governor Parson's murder of unvaccinated folks, so that one went away. Honestly, it's also supposed to be like 97 F today and being outside sounds like hell, so I guess it's a win either way.

When I started this blog, I felt like all of my report cards growing up, "so much potential" but nothing to show for it. Of course, even then, that wasn't true. One of the things I have learned with this blog is that by tooting my own horn, I remind myself that I do get my work done. When you have a total of 1 billion project ideas a day, the fact that you accomplish only 1 feels like a failure, until you put some perspective on it: that one thing is the thing that stuck, that resonated and manifested, and now it's here and beautiful in its imperfection. So I don't give up. Grit. I just keep going, even (especially) when my go looks different than others' go.

Since I started this blog, I have written 3 books, published 1 chapbook, have another chapbook in the last stages of the works, I've explored/explore multiple avenues of sharing my writing. I give myself daily permission to suck but to also keep going. To be scared, but to take risks anyway. I frequently don't get the results I thought I would, but it always teaches me. 

Not all my poems are winners. Today's poem is not.

8-10-21

I day dream

About sleeping in the woods

Under the stars

But the reality is Ticks and sweat

Anyway, happy 10 year anniversary to myself. Current and future me are proud of past me for doing this. 

If you want to wish me and my decade old blog a happy anniversary, you can always buy us a cup of ko-fi. 👄💓

10 years of love, sweat, and tears,

Kit S

As always, if you like (love) this content and want to support my writing outside of the big bad projects, and read supporter-only content, you can buy me a cuppa at ko.fi. You can also purchase my chapbook & audible of poetry, a record of night at Amazon. If you're so inclined, you can also follow my author page at goodreads or follow me on Twitter. 

Please show me some love and leave a comment, review, or rating on any of these platforms! Have an awesome day, my friends.

Spoken Word poetry redux

I spend a lot of time thinking about spoken word poetry and why I hate it when it's demonstrably and inarguably a valid and meaningful field of poetry- and I have explored many explanations but none of them ever sat right.

When I was in my early twenties and I hadn't formed an opinion about it yet, I did a few open mikes with a friend. I stood on stage, the color of a tomato, feeling embarrassment from the sweating crown of my head to my clenched toes. I smoked cigarettes outside afterwards and recycled the moment over and over in my head. I felt shame, I felt vulnerable, and most of all, I felt like my poems didn't belong with the other poems. I felt like I didn't belong with the other poets. 

Enter my late 20s: everybody tells me that I should listen to Andrea Gibson. I do. I hate every second of it. Their voice makes my stomach hurt. Their words make me feel hot and I want to shut down. Like, the words are good, but they are direct and raw and seem to be there to intentionally and forcefully illicit a response, which they do (and I don't like). I try to like their words. I subscribe to Button Poetry and try to like spoken word, slam poetry- after all, it's earnestly the poetry of marginalized people. It's where I first see fat, queer, trans, & BIPOC people reading their craft. I want to like it , but listening brings up those same hot & hard feelings. 

When I was in college I had a lot of bullshit academic reasons for why I didn't like spoken word poetry and honestly? They aren't worth going into here. They're bullshit.

I've even wrote posts here in this blog, many were deleted. They didn't feel true.

This week I was (once again) ranting about spoken word to Mr. J and it occurred to me that it's because so much of the structure of the craft is writing and saying things bluntly. It's radical vulnerability. I don't like it because I am deeply uncomfortable with radical vulnerability, but that's also why it's so powerful and why so many people do love it, and also why it is SO IMPORTANT. 

I doubt I'll be able to magically gravitate towards the form now, but it feels good to understand some of it's significance and it's truths. It's also understanding myself in a new way, understanding how I share my vulnerability as a writer of feelings. This knowledge sits right and it feels true. It feels more like a seed instead of rock.

@-%--

Sidebar: if you do the Tik Tok, I've got one up for regular poetry readings! Check me out, y'all: Amazing Kitikins Please like+follow+comment <3

Earnestly Yours,

Kit

As always, if you like (love) this content and want to support my writing outside of the big bad projects, and read supporter-only content, you can buy me a cuppa at ko.fi. You can also purchase my chapbook & audible of poetry, a record of night at Amazon. If you're so inclined, you can also follow my author page at goodreads or follow me on Twitter. 

Please show me some love and leave a comment, review, or rating on any of these platforms! Have an awesome day, my friends.

I dreamt a dream

 Last night I dreamt that I consistently and regularly kept up with this blog. Of all the things for my subconscious to pick on me for, I'm going to put that up there as one of the more trivial.

Anyway, it's been a hot minute. My writing has been on a hiatus, which I'm starting to think is perpetual. Maybe I'm not a writer anymore? Or maybe I'm digging in the dirt before I plant the seed. Who knows? I have been thinking about starting a new project. I've spent a lot of time thinking about my perpetually unfinished trilogy and all the things that are problematic with it and I don't think I'm going to finish it? Or maybe I have to finish it to fix it? I honestly don't know and I think I've been stuck on that question for years, and that I've felt too guilty to start other projects after investing so much time into that one. I think it's time to move on. If I want to go back and work on it, I can, but until then I need to move on with my life because I can't stay in this void forever.

This is now. I am officially giving up on this trilogy. I'm moving on. And it's okay and it's the right (write) thing for me to do.

So I'm going to do NaNoWriMo this year and try to kick off a new project. IDK what it'll be, but it'll be fun to think of something new!

Our writing group hasn't met since pre-pandemic and everybody has gone quiet in our online group, so I've been missing my writerly community. 

So this all worked really well when I had a blog schedule. I'm not sure what knocked me off that schedule- it honestly could have been anything, but I'm going to start putting this blog back on my planner so it's not out of sight out of mind.

So goals & brainstorming:

• Self publish August chapbook from last year, woo!
• Start brainstorming a new book for November
• Participate in NaNoWriMo
• Blog Weekly, minimum
• Connect with other writers
• Reading goals!
• Listen to podcasts to stay motivated 
• Write something every day

Next week is the 10 year anniversary of my blog! WHAT THE HECK. A whole ass decade, y'all! I may try to do something special, so stay tuned! I may not... we'll see...

Byeeeeeeeee!

As always, if you like (love) this content and want to support my writing outside of the big bad projects, and read supporter-only content, you can buy me a cuppa at ko.fi. You can also purchase my chapbook & audible of poetry, a record of night at Amazon. If you're so inclined, you can also follow my author page at goodreads or follow me on Twitter. 

Please show me some love and leave a comment, review, or rating on any of these platforms! Have an awesome day, my friends.