"Brood X"
A poem published in FERAL
Wrapping 2023 with a published poem
I’m so happy to be able to share my poem “Brood X” published in FERAL: A Journal of Poetry and Art - Animal Issue on December 31st, 2023 with you! You can read it here! The art on the page (unrelated to the poem) is by Meg Freer, and she is a poet as well!
A little bit of the backstory of this poem. I originally wrote it in the winter of 2022 while in an Orion Magazine poetry workshop led by Todd Davis, who is a wonderful poet and incredibly thoughtful instructor. You can find his poetry in lots of places, but since he publishes mostly in partnership with Michigan State University Press, I have linked them here. I highly recommend his poems to anyone who loves ecopoetry.
The workshop was called “Writing the Greater-than-Human World” and was a lovely guided foray into environmental poetry and ecopoetry (and yes, we debated those labels in the class!). When I saw the description of the class I knew it was a great fit for me because I frequently write in an environment-centric way, especially in an animal-centric way. The class was incredibly valuable, and it was generative (meaning we wrote poems in response to prompts and workshopped them as part of class). My poem Brood X was written during this workshop, and the style was directly inspired by a wonderful poem by Anne Haven McDonnell called The Swimmers that we read during class.
It seems on-brand that my first published poem is about cicadas. I have an unending fascination with those loud and lovely critters! I hope you all enjoy this poem about Brood X.
In other news:
We rescued a sweet, small beagle from Triangle Beagle Rescue and promptly named her Biscuit. We are in love with this precious creature!
100-day project progress report: Technically done but I’m still catching up…I’ll get to my 100 mark before long!
Currently reading: Mister B. Gone by Clive Barker (shout out and thank you to Brian for passing this book on to me in physical form!)
Recent internet search of note: Tara Reed art
A local artist from whom I recently brought a print. Shocker, I bought one of her cicada designs! See all of her prints here.
Congratulations! Love the poem! It resonates as science and experience. We lived through a brood X cycle in 2021 - it was overwhelming because we have maple trees in our yard and they love them. The piles of shells were so dense they looked like mulch around every tree and it was too loud to hear each other in the back yard. I still think about them when I go outside. Your beagle is adorable. Happy new year!