Wishing for a Better 2020: a Death in the Family, What to Write When WWIII is Trending, and Speculative Poetry Reading This Saturday

Glenn and I toasting on New Year’s Eve

Wishing for a Better 2020

After a quiet, uneventful, and thoroughly happy New Year’s Eve (see: pictures)  I woke up on New Year’s Day to the news that my grandfather had passed away at 99 and “Death to America” was trending. My father had just gotten out of the hospital for pneumonia and I broke off a piece of tooth in my sleep. In addition, it’s been cold and blustery here, too miserable (40s and rain) to do much outdoors, but Australia in midsummer is on fire, and its distressing news (the koala population might be functionally extinct! Here’s a picture of the red air in New Zealand right now!) keeps surfacing as well.

Celebrating the New Year at Willows Lodge

I am one of those people who tries to find the positive but it’s been a rough beginning to 2020 for me. My MS neurological symptoms have been acting up a bit – stress definitely plays a part in that – so I’ve been trying actively to avoid any extra bad news (except when I go on Twitter, which I’ll get to later.)

I’ve been writing a ton and even got an acceptance or two in the new year but it’s been hard to focus on that in the middle of everything else. Are you having the same issue? Are you still feeling hopeful for 2020?

An Anna’s hummingbird that appeared outside my window yesterday – a sign of hope?

What to Write When WWIII is Trending

So, the day after New Year’s day, I woke up to “WWIII” trending on Twitter. How to address the world like this? What can you possibly do or say to help the situation? I can’t do much when it comes to world politics, I can protest, I can vote when the vote comes around, I can call or write letters to my local congress people, but I cannot create peace on earth on my own.

It was hard already trying to help my mom when she’s in a different state (and her father was in a totally different midwestern state) and this tooth that’s due for a root canal is just shredding itself for some reason in preparation. I can’t control any of those things. Small acts of love, kindness, and peace? Yes. I can try to breathe. I can try to focus on the little everyday beauties around me.

Shelfie of some books that were really important to me when I first started writing. Good to return to inspirations.

My Twitter feed usually has very little politics, a range of writing news and announcements, nature pictures, and definitely no hellscapes, but this week has been different. I must have a lot of friends in New Zealand and Australia, because pictures of Hell-colored red air and smoke have been prominent on my timeline, along with fights about Iran and war. I’ve been writing about apocalypses for a while (see: Field Guide to the End of the World) but it’s always surprising to see how fast the apocalypses might be approaching on the horizon.

So what do you write when WWIII is trending? It’s not wise to get your news solely from social media, so I’ve been avoiding social media for things like reading and I’ve been checking in with my mom and dad back in Ohio to. I’m tackling my reading stack from the books I got for the holidays. I’ve been writing poems that try to make sense of the chaos.  Which is impossible, of course.

I went back to some older books, books by older authors like Stella Gibbons and Karen Blixen, which helped me remember that in the 1920s, there was irrational exuberance in the stock market, decadence and flappers and a wonderful proliferation in the art and writing world, and they were about to face World War II and the Great Depression. I went back to some of the books that helped me become the writer I am today, fairy tale and mythology writings that talk about how we tell stories, and why they’re important. 

Sylvia with some reading material and a stuffed figure of Mr. Winkle.

As writers, we can do one thing: we can document the world, our world, the specifics – the moods, the visuals, the attitudes. We can try to capture the moment, whatever that moment entails. That doesn’t mean we contain or control it – but at least we can offer perspective, a point-of-view, an account from the ground, so to speak.

Lesley Wheeler and I at a past AWP

Speculative Women Writers and Dinner with Friends

The MLA Conference is taking place in Seattle this upcoming week, which means Seattle folks can catch up with their friends who are fancy faculty in other states and that there are great readings all around the city this week. I am lucky enough to have a dinner scheduled with Lesley Wheeler, who is a great speculative writer and all-around motivated, hard-working, kind and thoughtful human (she has a novel and a poetry book coming out!) and then a reading with Lesley at Open Books and Seattle-based writer Jessica Rae Bergamino this Saturday January 11th at 7 PM!

I can prove that though I’ve known Lesley for years, because she lives and teaches on the East Coast, we rarely exist in the same space or even time zone – note the sole picture I could find of us together to the left was taken several years ago – so I’m excited for the opportunity! And I haven’t done a reading at all in a while, so I hope you come out and see us.

It’s actually a perfect time to celebrate speculative poetry, during a time period that is often described as possibly an embodiment of the futuristic dystopias written years earlier, a time of apocalyptic fires and conflicts. What better time to imagine the future? I’ll be reading a bit from Field Guide to the End of the World, but also a bit of new work, which has a fiercer, but more hopeful, apocalyptic mood, from one of my manuscripts that has been circulating. I hope it will lift your mood, and mine. Here’s to a better 2020!