I’m writing to you at the end of winter, on a morning when there’s a little snow on the ground but the bulbs have begun to come up. Just a few weeks ago, my new raised garden beds looked like this:
I’m in the midst of writing a very long essay for grad school about the incredible, genius book Winter by Sarah Vap. I’m going to share a bit of that with you, not only because it’s what I’m thinking about all the time right now, but also because I think it’s incredibly relevant for life right now.
Each page of Winter is framed by words across the top and bottom of the page, in smaller text than the body of the poem itself, stating “Drones are probably killing someone right now.” Before the reader even enters the body of the poems—death, technology, and the military-industrial-capitalist complex intrude into our experience.
This phrase is repeated throughout the entire collection, across every single top and bottom of every page, continually interrupting and framing the text held within. Before the reader can enter the body of the poem, before the reader can exit the page and move to the next, the reader must again encounter and move through “Drones are probably killing someone right now.” There is no page in this collection that doesn’t include this text, as Vap says towards the end of Winter, “If I am living in a nation state that is bombing someone right now, then so is my writing, I.” The repetition of the sentence about drones is both jarring and also (like the experience of living inside a military-industrial-capitalist complex) quickly becomes invisibilized and unnoticed by the reader. This is one of the many ways that Vap’s formal choices enact on the page the experiences that the poems spring out of.
Winter seems, to me as a reader, to revise the notion that a poem can be written by itself, that a book can exist by itself, without context, without the world pouring in. That to be a mother is to be irrevocably made porous and the poem, and the book must also be porous if there is any hope of it being true. Vap, after being asked about this phrase in an interview, said:
Even if it’s bugging the shit out of me to read the phrase “Drones are probably killing someone right now” again, because I’ve said it so many times, I’m going to fucking say it again. And even if the phrase is ruining my poem, fuck my poem. Even if it’s ruining my book, fuck my book. I’m going to say it again.
At home, I’ve had reason to remember this week some herbal wound care tools that I haven’t use in quite a while. The usual required disclaimers: I’m not a medical doctor, this isn’t approved by the FDA, blah blah blah.
People’s paste is a mixture of herbal powders traditionally used for wound healing in western herbalism. The recipe varies a bit, but is usually equal parts of several of the following herbs: slippery elm powder, bayberry root powder, comfrey root powder, myrrh powder.
Used externally only, you mix a small amount of the powder mixture with either water or honey, and apply directly to a clean wound. (Don’t put this in your eyes, seems obvious but just in case.) These herbs have antibacterial properties as well as promoting skin healing. Reapply as needed.
Honey itself is also a powerful wound protector and healer. Simply apply a thin layer of honey to the (cleaned) wound. Honey is antibacterial, promotes skin health, and will also draw out any pus or unwanted liquids from the wound (which makes it particularly useful for abscesses, fill in the abscess with honey).
In other poetry news, I was incredibly honored to have both my poetry chapbook, Rupture, and the poetry anthology I edited, My Hand Holding Tight My Other Hand, chosen for CLMP’s Women’s History Month reading list. Nine Syllables Press, where I’m the editor, has announced the winner of our 2023 chapbook contest: Jai Hamid Bashir’s chapbook Desire//Halves, which will be out in the fall.
For those of you who are local, I’ll be teaching a writing workshop on Writing the Body on Mondays in April at Looky Here in Greenfield. I’ll also be reading at both GCC (April 17 12:30-1:45) and the Greenfield Public Library (April 17 6:00-7:30) with several other poets who attended or work at GCC.
For those of you who are not locals, I’ll be teaching an online workshop on troubling the archive (erasures, blackouts, and centos) through Write or Die on Monday, June 17th from 7 - 9 PM EST.
I have an essay called “So, I Lied–The Chapbook as a Coherent Container" coming out with Write or Die online this week. Here’s a lil teaser:
The doctor left and now someone was crying, I was crying. I asked Sarah to text my parents, and tell them what was happening, and to text my lover. The nurses came and wheeled my bed down the halls to the surgery room, nearly running. The lights in the surgery room glinted off the tools laid on the metal trays. Don’t look, I told myself. You’re going to wake up from this, you’re going to wake up.
“Count down from ten for me,” said the anesthesiologist, pulling the mask over my mouth and nose.
“Ten, nine,” I said, then I wasn’t anymore.
And finally, if you’re not on TikTok or Instagram (find me @AdrieRose_), here’s the video I posted last week, reading a poem from I Will Write a Love Poem. Ignore the typo at the beginning where the autotext says I’m reading a book from my checkbook lol.
Adrie