Young Writers Society

Premise
I'm working on three poetry chapbook projects at the moment, and this is one of them! The working title is "heritage". did I make this writers corner thread to show off the cool art collage / cover deal that I made? maybe. It's loosely inspired by my dive into ancestry research during covid and the theme is family and all it relates to - generations, land, home, tradition, story and memory.

At the moment my poems are ranging from way too personal to actually publish or post anywhere to wow that's an oddly specific story that no one else in the history of humanity will relate to - but between that there's also some stuff that might make it into my final project draft - and even if this doesn't go anywhere I really enjoyed the process of putting a chapbook draft together last winter / spring, and so I'm going for it again!

In this thread you'll probably get mostly my notes, ramblings, and artsy-edits, but feel free to comment if ya want, and I'll try to leave some poem snippets (if I get any written) too! I'm also making this because I feel like bragging about my NaNo progress somewhere but don't want to disrupt the novelists while they work.

November Goals
I have 10 poems towards this project and I'd like 30-40 more to choose from.
My goal is to write 40 poems in November, and maybe that'll be around 5,000 words.
I'd love to have a ROUGH draft of this done by the end of November and maybe a second draft by January.

December Goals
Keep on swimming, keep on swimming ...

February Update
-> Around Feb I decided to pause working on the "Heritage" Chapbook in order to finish up my "Rivers" Chapbook for submission to a poetry contest at the end of April.

April Update
-> Finished NaPo wrote more "Heritage" Chapbook possible poems and submitted "Rivers" to contest - but wasn't completely excited about how that ended up.

June Goal
-> I plan to resume working on my "Heritage" chapbook project in June in addition to another chapbook project called with the working title "Liturgy".



NaNo Progress
Complete Poems already on YWS
[url=LINK]Poetry Snippets[/url]
Poetry Ramblings

"NaNo" Progress

GOAL: 30 Poems / 5,000 Words
FINAL: 27 Poems (snippets counting as poems) / 2,264 Words

nov 1 - 275 words, 1 poem "All Saints' Sunday" + very cool writers corner post
nov 2 - 99 words, 1 poem "Birthday Nonsense"
nov 3 - 270 words, 1 poem, 4 snippets "Eponymous"
nov 4 - 124 words, 2 poems, 1 snippet "october" "unfamiliar seasons"
nov 5 - 0 words
nov 6 - 39 words, 1 poem, 1 thought "rivers gone"
nov 7 - 50 words?
nov 8 - 210 words, 1 poem, 4 snippets "disconnect" / "ghost"
nov 9- 165 words, 1 poem, many snippets
nov 10 - AND THEN I STOPPED KEEPING TRACK of the daily account because it was stressing me out, BUT I AM Still writing

Poetry Ramblings

* NaNo Reflections - Squills Article

* NaPo Premise - Years Lost to Locusts - here
My NaPo premise for 2021 connected some of the ancestry themes I'm working with in this chapbook draft.

It's pretty stark to remember that a whole year has passed since the pandemic started. No doubt, there's also been growth and joy this year, and many have experienced immeasurably worse than I've had it. But that doesn't take away the feeling that in many ways, a year has been lost. Something that's been a little comfort, sometimes in commiserating and sometimes in inspiring has been to wade through ancestry research during the last year. Covid may be a strange and unfamiliar occurrence in our generation, but "losing years" is nothing new for our family trees. I think of ancestors who left their homes and families in order to seek a better life, I think of ancestors who were stuck in tuberculosis infirmaries, or navy boats, or remote Appalachian cabins. It reminds of that saying that loss is ubiquitous, and maybe there's some solace in knowing that?

And on the edge of loss there's always hope. In scripture God promises, that those years that have been lost to locusts, will one day be restored. I find that to be one of the most poetic sentiments in the Bible. That maybe in our life, or in the next generation, or maybe only in the life-to-come that years lost will be restored. And that's what I've tried to remember when I sweep up dead bugs and browse through census records.

"Heritage" Poems already on YWS

[Here's some poems that I've written that are already on YWS that have some of the same flavor as the poems that'll end up in this chapbook, I'll probably be doing some major revision rounds with many of them before they end up in there and will probably remove them from the site before submitting this anywhere, but still nice to have all in one place and you might just be curious, who knows?]

Poem A Week
eponymous - link (nov. 2020)


family photos link

things i learn to love about my grandmother in hindsight link

NaPo 2020
the night is enormous but i know better now
i'm still very homesick
everything i brought from home
birds in walls and other memories - under spoiler

NaPo 2019
unwinding roots -removed temporarily
broken branches | new soil
what color was her skin in the sun
to not forget

NaPo 2018
loose thoughts
to my father
growing pains

NaPo 2017
ongoing battles
have i forgotten?

Other Poems
many currently removed for submission elsewhere
Women Borne of Oceans september 2017
homesick | nostalgia february 2019
the lines from these hands february 2017

subnote but it's really interesting for me reading through these poems from four years of napo that are writing on some of the same themes.

I was going to leave a post on your wall about how I'm itching to comment in this poetry chapbook thread because I legit love the entire project but I didn't want to disturb it by doing so even though you said it's okay *breathes*

But then the wall post got a little long, so I decided it might make more sense here where it's relevant. So here are comments and things ~

NaPo 2021
quarantine too far from home | letters to our mothers
- from Leslie while in a tuberculosis sanitarium (1918) - under spoiler

echoes and familiar faces
the tendencies of serotinous trees
photo album hunting- for Wilhelmina (1867)
everything i carry home



I'm sort of paused on attempting to wrap up or submit this project since like February, because the last time I was working on it - things weren't really coming together how I wanted them to (in the interim I finished a 2nd draft of "Rivers" to submit to another contest thing though), so I'd say I'm kind of scrapping some of the ordering I had going on in my original thoughts - and am now in the drafting stage for this again - so writing new poems (+ little memoir and biographical pieces actually) without as much of an "end product" idea in mind. No current goal of when that'll be finished. Though as kind of a sibling to this project - I had a cute little photo / biography / mild poetry snippets book printed just like for my personal enjoyment and had printed for one side of the family - and working on making it even more artsy to possibly distribute to some more folks, and then will probably work on the one for the other side of the family this summer or fall. I might be getting into memoir writing again generally too - which seems like it'd be ideal to mash together with this project.

I have two other chapbook projects going on though - with the working titles "Rivers" and "Liturgy"! So maybe I'll give some updates on how those are going too - since those feel like things I may actually be able to publish in the next half century.

NaPo 2022

letters to brothers with Elijah - September 1846


^^ This is probably one of the poems I'm most proud of from NaPo and definitely goes with my family tree poetry-project that's been growing in the background even though it's technically "on the shelf" still experimenting but the concept is sort of a "found-poem" out of some snippets from an actual letter from my 5th Great Grandfather, Elijah, to his brother and then my own thoughts in-between. I clipped the letter in this case so you can see which lines are from Elijah and you can read it in some different ways- might clean up the formatting and edges later.

this is the origin of my collecting
write until you find your home
where's home: a found poem from the findings of a Pew Research Center Survey

and i am a river


~~~



I have continued to do significant research in my ancestry research in the last year and I'm still trying to figure out what exactly I'm trying to produce from it. I've got one completed photo / info book, and am working on a second (for the other side of the family), I've been cataloguing a huge photo collection, and have a few interesting newspaper stories that would lend themselves to maybe some sort of creative non-fiction project?

In the last year three significant things happened: 1) The cousin who helped me get started in my ancestry research passed away - I get the sense she was very relieved to have been able to share some of her research with someone before she passed, and I definitely aspire to create some concrete object that can be similarly passed on too. 2) I finally scanned every ancestry photo from my childhood home and both my parent's personal collections. 3) I am now in contact with two other relatives who've given me a little bit of help as well!

Some Concrete Goals for rest of 2022
1) Finish my second photo book.
2) Revise? my first photo book.
3) Do more research on mines / railroads connected to my family - and maybe even visit this one particular railroad museum.
4) Begin arranging 2 additional photo / document books - to store physical docs.
5) Consider trying out writing some of the vignettes that are more "interesting" to potentially arrange together to be distributed to certain relatives. (I did a little work on this during camp nano last? year)
~ don't actually know where the poetry would go into these, but memoire writing is very poetic to me, so maybe it'd be wedged in between etc. ~