Spring 2021 Newsletter
Dear Friends,
Spring is early here. It snows plum petals before the first of March, and the birds sing in a particularly busy way.
This is a poetry-laden newsletter and I do love words. Featured are poems by two women I admire and whom I look to as I wrestle with my own wordsmithing, feeling like the eternal beginner.
Included below is a poem of mine from my soon-to-be-released sound-and-poetry EP: Covid Trio. (Read on for details on where and how you, my community, can listen to the songs now, in advance of the official release date.)
Per always, if it doesn't please you to receive these emails, then it doesn't please me. You are welcome to remove yourself at any time using the unsubscribe button at the bottom of this missive.
in this issue:
+Covid Trio
+Two Local Poets
+My Guest Mix on Signal to Noise Radio
+The “Before We Were White” Course
+Join me on Instagram and Bandcamp
COVID TRIO
When Covid hit one full year ago, like many, I went through a depression. I wanted so much to make work about the current circumstances yet did not feel moved. Still, I felt a sense of urgency to get to work amidst the lack of motivation which stemmed from thinking this would pass soon, it would spike over the spring and then we would move back into life after.
I think many of us were thinking along these lines in that early time, perhaps because of the unthinkableness of existing this way in a more long-term scenario, unemployment, evictions, losing elder loved ones without contact, how unprepared the government was.
Now we have seen the real darkness of this pandemic and arrive here, in the early spring of 2021, wondering what can possibly define the word “Future” as a faint light emerges ahead.
After some time I did get to work, and this rather absurdist trio of short works based on poems I wrote is what formed.
Their titles are:
King’s Paper
The Precious Lung
The Phases of Panic
THE PHASES OF PANIC
Hoard
Believe everything you hear/see
Grieve in scattered anticipation
Settle down, watch down, go down
Start a bank account to save your sense of touch
Touch your: Cat, Dog, Rabbit, Pigeon, Scorpion, Woolen cap, Jar of Pickles, Precise time of day, Temptations, Trajectory of the stock market, Child, self.
Lie down on piles of lace
Sing everyone else's praises
Pray to the moon
Patch your clothing again
and again and again and again and again
Listen to and read more poems from the Covid Trio, here. Password: Covidtrio
TWO LOCAL POETS
Now please soak in two short pieces by Maw Shein Win (Storage Unit 202) and Elizabeth Costello (Stalk). If these small tastes of their latest releases tempt you to want more, please look into ordering their books via the links provided below.
MY GUEST MIX ON SIGNAL TO NOISE
I was invited to create a guest mix on the Signal to Noise show this winter, a fun diversion and something I have not done before.
My mix begins at around 40 minutes in.
THE “BEFORE WE WERE WHITE” COURSE
I am currently taking an online course called “Before We Were White,” put on by the White Awake organization. It is an education specifically for people who are classified as “white” in finding our roots, with a keen awareness that collective liberation is essential for human healing.
The coursework is deep and illuminating and I am learning so much. I highly recommend this course. For me, it has prompted a personal examination of my own relationship to where I came from on a more thoughtful and examined level, with some surprising and emotional results.
BEING (ON) SOCIAL (MEDIA)
I am newly engaging in the world of social media. Please find/follow/join me?
Instagram: @merlincolemann
Bandcamp: merlincoleman.bandcamp.com