Ok, But How?
Why a newsletter? Why now?
Why a newsletter?
Just over a year ago, I drove with my husband and children across the US from Vermont to Vancouver to start a new job mid-pandemic in a city where I knew no one. Over the course of the year, I’ve survived thanks to phone calls with friends, text-co-working sessions, and convincing the one colleague who lives in my building to join me in the courtyard to eat the cakes I bake (Thanks, Emily!).
I’ve written letters with varying degrees of regularity since I was 15 and left for a full year in Switzerland as an exchange student (who barely spoke French). Sometimes, I even use Naomi Bulger’s gorgeous templates to make pretty painted envelopes.
But letters can only go to one person at a time (I mean, that’s also a reason I love them). And at times I have something I’d like to share with more than one person. Something too long for Twitter. Something for people who aren’t on Facebook. Maybe even something for people I haven’t met yet but who are thinking about the rich curious hows of reading or writing or teaching (or yes, cooking too—I’m letting all the making worlds blur here the way they blur in my actual practice). And I want to hear what you’re struggling with and trying to figure out. How to revise. Or how to teach revision. How to make a raspberry buttercream that doesn’t curdle.
Why now?
The nudge to actually steal part of a Saturday to set everything up has been the publication of my poetry collection The Silk the Moths Ignore, which is coming out later this month.
In The Silk the Moths Ignore, I write about historically trivialized and unspoken subjects like miscarriage, pregnancy, children, work, and women’s friendships with love and without glossing over their rawness and mess. These poems attempt to hold the full complexity of emotions: to name the fleeting and ephemeral, to make visible what’s blurred into background and unnoticed, to add nuance and substance to what’s simplified and squashed into cliché and platitude.
Bringing this book into the world is introducing me to a whole new realm of hows that I’m eager to share with you.
Warmly,
Bronwen
PS: If you’re ever in Vancouver, let me know so I can meet you in the courtyard with a cake.
