Old Poetry for You!

Currently Listening to: Sweet silence.

Currently feeling: So, so excited for spring.

Hello sweet readers, if you're still here! It's been a while since I wrote an actual blog post, but I have been updating other areas of the site. Namely, I'm trying to get more of my original work up in the Original Fiction area of the site. I recently wrote a fun science fiction fake blog post in honor of my friend's birthday LARP (as in, he wrote it and directed it on his birthday). So if you'd like, go check that out.

I also uploaded a nice chunk of old poetry. This was my motivation for actually writing this blog post--to give a little bit of context. After I graduated from undergraduate, I received an internship to work at a clownfish hatchery. Yes, you read that right. To raise clownfish for aquarium keepers. It's a thing.

The hatchery was quite literally in the middle of nowhere. The nearest real town was about 20 minutes south of the hatchery. The 'town' the hatchery was in was probably a single parkinglot with an extremely cute one-room library, a post office, and a dollar general. The hatchery was based out of a University of Maine owned aquaculture campus, which served as a teaching location and business incubator. The campus did have housing in the form of a small on-campus house that could host up to 4 people comfortably, 5 if necessary. The house was about a 10 minute walk up the driveway from the campus proper.

Crucially, this house did not have internet. The campus itself had internet. So if I wanted internet, I would have to walk or drive down to campus and go into the multipurpose room in the office, which they did leave open for me, and did have a couch. Otherwise, I kind of just had to make do without it. So, needless to say, that summer was filled with a lot of smoking weed, a lot of hiking around, a lot of reading, and a lot of writing.

Mostly, I wrote poetry. I was there through the summer, which is when Maine's nature is so perfectly wonderful. And, surprising to no one, hugely inspirational. I'm hardly the first artist to take inspiration from the Maine wilderness, but it was still just as glorious and wonderful as everyone made it out to be. I had a total blast that summer, and learned a fuck ton about aquaculture. I did sometimes miss the presence of other humans in the evening (I was alone in that house), but nevertheless it was quite an interesting ten weeks.

I chose to write sonnet poetry that summer. I write other poems (obviously, for example), but I do really enjoy working on sonnets generally. It's very fun to sift through language to be able to fit words to the specific rhyming scheme. My favorites are Shakespearean, though I tend to do two quatrains and a couplet rather than three. I'll like to my two favorites. My closest companion that summer was my ovation guitar, Levi. I learned to play when I was 12, so he's been a part of my life for a very, very long time. So naturally, I wrote him a sonnet. The other piece I am quite proud of is my Ode to Venus. I am a huge star nerd (and yes, have been deeply enjoying all of the Artemis II converage, no fear), so gazing at the stars in the early night was also a big activity when I lived on that campus. In total I wrote 6.

Hopefully it won't be too much longer until my next post. I am putting together a short (ish) story for submission this week. I want to send it along to Kaleidotrope, a spec fic magazine. The piece is strictly horror, without a sci-fi or fantasy undertone, so a lot of the spec fic magazines of note are kind of out for it. Kaleidotrope is the first one where I think my tone actually fits with the published work. And I've been enjoying reading a few stories here and there. The one that really convinced me my piece might fit is a piece by EC Dorgan called Water Softener People. That one was qutie a fun read, as a fan of the strange and unusual.

Peace and love on planet Earth! Enjoy this spring as much as you can. If you're in the North Hemi, get out and get some sun! If you're in the South Hemi, bundle up and enjoy the crisp autumn air. I'll be back before too long. XOXO -- Storm.