Writing Goals in the Waning Year

Soon, I hope to return to more regular blogging--this week, in fact.  Over the week-end, I turned in my last papers for seminary classes for fall semester 2024.  My grades are done and turned in.  So far, I have not caught all the colds and viruses that seem to be affecting others.

I not only want to get back to blogging, but also some poetry writing and submitting.  The places where I submit are getting fewer and fewer--submission windows are open and closed more quickly, and there are fees I'm not willing to pay (and more and more journals asking for more and more money).

Let me record some of the poetry ideas I've had.

--I've thought of my series of poems about Noah's wife who has made life changes after the Flood (that flood that required Biblical Noah to build an arc); one of my favorites, "Higher Ground," appeared in Dear Human at the Edge of Time: Poems on Climate Change in the United States, and you can read it in this blog post.  I have also written poems about Cassandra, as a way to talk about climate change, and one of the more recent ones I've written imagines Cassandra living in the mountains.

Revisiting these characters in light of Hurricane Helene seems promising.

--I've also been contemplating my Facebook feed, which is full of people constructing gingerbread houses alongside people rebuilding houses wiped out by Hurricane Helene floodwaters.  My commute to church in Bristol, TN takes me through some severely devastated areas, where nothing is left of homes but rubble, and I can't imagine they will be rebuilt.  It seems there should be a poem there, but I'm not sure I can pull it off.

--I'd also like to get back to a daily practice of shorter poems and observations.  I need to train my attention again.  Happily, I'm teaching literature classes this coming term, which always helps me return to poetry roots.

--I also enjoyed writing for one of my seminary classes--it was mostly memoir, a very short piece.  I'd like to do more of that, more fiction writing.

--In short, I want to get back to the writing that feeds my soul, even if it never gets published, never leads to larger work.  I've been doing a lot of seminary writing, which feeds my soul in a different way, and so much grading, which doesn't feed my soul at all.  It's time to remember the reasons I wanted a teaching job in a 4 year, liberal arts school--time to read and write.