Mission: Accomplished!

In my last post, I mentioned that I had a few goals for 2019 and as the year comes to a close, I’m happy to say that I met those goals (with the exception of one, but I’ll get into that in a minute). To be more specific, two of my main goals were to start submitting some of my poems for publication and to read at an open mic. Well, in May, I had my first poem published in No, Dear Magazine! The issue’s theme was “ERROR” and the poem is called “Recoil.” I’m so happy that this poem found a home at an amazing publication like No, Dear. In addition to that, I’ve actually read at more than one open mic. In total, I read about five times this year and I get nervous every time, but it always goes well and it gets easier every time.

Mission: Accomplished?

The one goal that I didn’t meet was to post on this blog more often. But overall, I’m not that disappointed about that – mostly because I feel like my writing has just taken me in a different direction and I’m learning to let myself go in that direction, even if it means blogging less often. This year, I had the opportunity to take two poetry workshops at Cave Canem, an organization that supports the work of Black poets (the photo at the top is from the class reading for the first workshop I took earlier this year). It was an amazing opportunity and I’m so grateful to the instructors who led the workshops and the great poets I had the pleasure of meeting in the process. So if blogging less leads to opportunities like this, I’m willing to make that trade off.

When One Thing Leads To Another…

After No, Dear Magazine published my poem in their ERROR issue, they also gave me the opportunity to discuss the issue’s theme with one of the editors and two of the other issue contributors on Montez Press Radio. This was another first for me and I was honored to participate in this conversation. Everyone involved added their own unique perspective on the way they view and process errors in their day-to-day lives and work. Click here to listen to the segment. And if you’re interested in supporting a wonderful Brooklyn-based poetry journal, check out the No, Dear website as well where you can browse and purchase past issues and/or purchase a subscription.

What’s Next?

At this point, I’m content with just doing what I can to stay disciplined and continue writing (participating in writing groups, workshops, sending work out to be published, etc) and in turn, seeing where that takes me. I do have some new goals for 2020: to get more work published and to do a writing retreat. But I feel genuinely excited to see where this new year (and new decade) will take me. All in all, this year was filled with highs and lows, which is true for any year I suppose. But I’d say that this one had some pretty great highs, and for that, I’m grateful.

Until next time…