What I'll be up to in 2013:
Soldiers are coming home. Families and communities are
welcoming them back. I want to probe the seams of family, community and the
military for my poetry project. There’s a small phrase in a poem by William
Carlos Williams that has guided me since my son enlisted in the Army two years
ago: “It is difficult to get the news from poems, yet men die miserably every
day for lack of what is found there.” My poems for this project are about the “there.”
A grant from the NEA will provide me with funding and time so that I can
travel, do further research and writing. I plan to visit military bases around
the country and compile personal memories, oral histories and interviews. My
poetry will be about the intersection of family, home and community, where
parents, spouses and children of returning warriors live. I will also be
readying myself for my son’s upcoming deployment. I will write about this place
and bring back news through poetry so we can better understand its landscape.
(from my NEA poetry fellowship application)
