Oh my word, this book.
This was not a book I meant to write. In fact, as I began it back in approximately early September, it felt like a complete distraction from what I was *meant* to be writing, which was Define Good, the next Kaditeos book.* Define Good had been going quite well, but then all of a sudden… I stopped being able to write fiction again.
* We will discuss this at a later date. For now, best not to ask questions about that series >.<
Longtime readers will know: fiction is always the first thing to go for me when my brain is being/feeling suboptimal. And apparently, suboptimal she was.
Luckily, I also had my writer bestie Liana Brooks there to remind me that over the years she’s known me, this is an observable pattern: I revert to poetry when my mind is trying to process. I wonder: is this because what I primarily wrote in high school was poetry, or did I primarily write poetry in high school because there was a lot going on that I needed to process?
Chicken egg, egg chicken.
And so, there are three periods in my life so far that have been Defined By Poetry:* 1) high school, with my parents divorcing and many other difficult things going on; 2) after the birth of my son, when I had postnatal depression; and 3) the last quarter of 2022, while processing the even-more-massive-than-I-anticipated shift in my identify from a school-attender to a… something else.
* Hmm, that’s a good name for a future collection…
Guys, it’s been epic. I don’t think I’ve cried/sworn/been angry so much in my life. An absolute freaking rollercoaster. And through it all, the poems unspooled from the ether.
I don’t plan poems; I can’t. For me, they are a magical bit of energy dropping into my mind at exactly the right time to take root and grow. Dandelion fluff, blown in on the wind of my ever-whirling thoughts. I can’t predict when they might land, and whether the soil they land in will be fertile. All I can do is catch them, water them as soon as possible (by writing them down), and nurture them into life. Because if I don’t do that fast enough either, like a seedling they wither and die.
All very mystical, isn’t it? 😀 hehe.
I don’t have this for stories. They can sit for decades as a little story seed, waiting for the right conditions, and survive just fine. Maybe… maybe yes, poems are dandelion fluff and stories? Stories are nuts. (Which explains why some of them are tough to crack, haha.)
But the result of all of this, of course, without any further ado, is Change Becomes Us: poems of becoming. I finished the proofs for it this past weekend and I so, so enjoyed rereading it. I am exceedingly proud of this lil book (120 pages, so not that little), and the journey it so clearly encapsulates – about losing our identity, about trusting to the fall, about finding new life on the other side of massive, life-shifting changes – and through it all, trusting that we have what it takes, that our judgement was sound, and that sometimes, the grass really can be greener even when it means leaving behind things we love.
Change Becomes Us
Out 27 March 2023
Available now for preorder direct from me
Preorders at other retailers coming soon
PS There will probably be a Kickstarter for this in early March too. Keep an eye out for bonus goodies <3 <3
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