Serendipitously Inspired by Marge Piercy
Story time.
A few months ago, I was in a Mail Art workshop led by Anna Ryan Expressive Arts and Bethany Schlegel Shaw in my library’s makerspace. People think that makerspaces are only super high-tech. Yes, with their 3D printers and laser cutters, they usually are. But they also often have very “low-tech” things such as art supplies, tools (please see video below of a vise grip in an old card catalog!)…and books. Books that you can use for your projects. Like you can tear them up for collage, etc. (These are books that have been weeded and can’t be circulated/sold.) So I was thumbing through a book of poems and just *had* to rip something out. But it didn’t go on the mail art I was working on. It went in my bag. And now it is taped above my desk.
This purloined paper is the poem ‘Homesick’ by Marge Piercy. You can check out the pics below to read it. And the reason I swiped it is because I am working on a book-length manuscript about, well, homesickness. (And I am grateful to be a part of a yearlong writing workshop with Pioneer Valley Writers’ Workshop to hopefully keep me from floundering too much.)
If you have something to say about “being homesick,” I would love to talk to you. This can take a lot of forms — from the person I interviewed who has always felt homesick despite living 20 minutes from where she grew up, to the person living outside of his or her home country trying to figure out if they’ll ever get back. Migration has been the norm since the beginning of time, but what does it mean to move around in a world that is so much more instantaneously connected? On the flip side, what does it mean to be rooted? (And if you read Piercy’s poem, you can see she’s referencing something more environmental, organic. And perhaps emphasizing the “sick” part.)
Thank you, serendipitous poem, for being a talisman. (And perhaps I will use that vise grip to fashion something to keep me affixed to this chair as I write and research.) #amwriting
originally published on instagram