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How has the Coronavirus / social distancing / shelter-in-place / remote
everything affected your practice?
This sheltering in place is a kind of shelter I've needed for a long time. I
have the privilege to be working from home, and my partner, for now, does too.
My most basic needs are met more fully than they usually can be. I'm able to
eat more healthily, and to move around more. It feels weird to experience a
benefit from a situation that is harming so many. Of course that benefit would
diminish if I or my partner or our families got sick—and he will be asked to
return to work before I will. I feel a responsibility to use this time well.
*Well* includes those basic needs; apart from work, that's what I've been
focusing on, and it feels good.
I have a spring garden in for the first time in years—usually the garden has to
wait till May, when my daily workload eases up a little. We are eating radishes
and lettuce, the peas are getting bigger, my herb bed is weeded.
My writing is louder in my mind and body than it usually can be at this point
in the year. Not that I'm doing much writing, but I feel it. I have hope for
the summer months.
What are you reading, and/or what do you hope to start soon?
I've had a library copy of Hilary Mantel's *The Mirror and the Light *on my
nightstand since sometime in March; I haven't managed to start it, but I will.
I'm reading the *Guardian*, maybe too much of it, but its voice is so sane that
it is refreshing even as it depletes me.
Once the semester is over I will read *To the Lighthouse*, with pleasure, and
will finish it, finally.
I've been sending a poem a week to the staff of the magazine I edit. These are
the two from that bunch that I'm working on memorizing:
"The Trees
<http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20151201-a-beautiful-animation-of-philip-larkins-the-trees>,"
Philip Larkin, in *The Collected Poems*, Faber, 1993
"Sorrow Is Not My Name
<https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/92472/sorrow-is-not-my-name>," Ross
Gay, in *Bringing the Shovel Down*, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011
I'm reading, very slowly, a book called *The Trainable Cat*. Its ideas about
gender are outdated and its style irks me. But our new kitten, Bijoux, is
exemplary and also in need of training, so I will persist.
Books on my list to order: *Flourish*, poems by Dora Malech; *Minor Feelings*,
Cathy Park Hong; *White Fragility*, Robin DiAngelo; *The Body Keeps the Score*,
Bessel van der Kolk; *Doomstead Days*, poems by Brian Teare; *Parakeet*, a
novel by Marie-Helene Bertino.
What new resources have you found?
My home—our house and yard and the county park nearby—is a resource I have
often wished to rely on and explore more. Now I have more chances to. The April
plants, which I usually don't get to see much of, I've been watching with glee:
blue-eyed grass, leatherflower, little tiny weed-things in the marigold family.
(I saw a link for a marigold ID webcast in the UK recently, and longed for a
North America version.)
Dance classes via Zoom! I'm so thankful my dance teacher has moved her teaching
online; I can go to more classes each week than I could before. In my living
room, looking out across the street to the river, rolling around. I love it.
What are you trying?
I am keeping two lists: things I'll keep after this time, and things I won't go
back to. It has been illuminating so far.
I am trying to go to bed earlier.
I am gathering equipment and supplies to accompany the new press I bought, a
Golding Pearl No. 11 Improved. I picked it up on the winter solstice. Hopefully
by the summer solstice, I'll be printing at home.
Anna Lena
Local 919 Shop AB
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*Ornament <http://untpress.unt.edu/node/3400>*, poems, UNT Press
Instagram: @annalenasproflection
<https://www.instagram.com/annalenasproflection/>
