Clematis Updates and a Quick Hello

What's next with SBT

Hello dears, thinking of you all.

This month I’m wrapping up my student teaching, working with my juniors and seniors (the juniors are creating activist campaigns, the seniors are writing motivational speeches) and just beginning to glimpse a life where I won’t be so consumed—consumed with classwork, consumed with pedagogy, consumed with my teaching practice.

My life outside teaching is a thrilling and modest bare minimum: cutting lawn grass back from around my leaping clematis; yoga and prayer in the mornings; listening to mix CDs from Andy while I drive; making my weekly Seattle U food pantry pickup; sitting one evening a week or so on a dock with Finn while they fish; sending parking lot voice memos to friends; looking through art books (lately Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, Worlds Beyond Time: Sci-Fi Art of the 1970s, Procession: the Art of Norman Lewis, and Paula Modersohn-Becker: the First Modern Woman Artist) on the couch while Finn draws and inks on their graphic novel.

I made it to Unpoetry last week. I read Hilary Plum’s furious urgent despairing blaze of a single poem, Important Groups. I’ve made notes in the app for a few Seven Best Things I’m eager to share with y’all over the late spring early summer: one is coming up on what’s next for the left; one on recanting sci-fi dreams; one on the broken promises of our country’s institutional life; one on mixtapes; and one on never getting the 60s back. I’m grateful for each of you and looking forward, as summer gets ripe, to sharing more regular thinking, feeling, and exploring here.

Before I go: please make a gift to Hossam’s family in northern Gaza and save the date to come see me read: July 27, 7 pm at Common Area Maintenance. More on this event as the date approaches.