In advance of V-day, a list of loves
from SULEIKA JAOUAD, Prompt 282. What Would I Do Without You
"Create an inventory of your loves—whoever breaks you open, whatever animates your life.” Suleika Jaouad, Prompt 282, reprised from February 13, 2022.
Suleika Jaouad writes The Isolation Journals and while this journal is a recent discovery for me, when I’m reading it, I have to slow down and savour her words. The leukemia she had as a child, which forced her into learning how to turn solitude into creativity and connection.
I read her most recent prompt early this morning and have been thinking about it all day. I like the idea of being broken open. Suleika writes “Why is it that we have such an easier time summoning love, expressing love, and receiving love when we’re facing a heightened sense of mortality—an awareness of our finitude, our impermanence?”
This happened to me in 2009 when I experienced a near-death health crisis, and since then, I am intensely aware of how lucky I am to be alive. I am enthralled by people who love and care for others, who inspire others, who let others in through their creative acts, through their willingness to listen and share what they learn with the world. I am enchanted and changed by art that cares and brings community together and is outward looking rather than inward. I love to play and I love the way that people play and thrive in a world that often seems so selfish and brutal. I am steeped in art.
In a time of unsettling uncertainty in my and my husband’s personal life, due to financial troubles, I feel like I love him more every day. He has found a way to carve joy out of what could have been a miserable time. Our quests for inexpensive and delicious food has been one of the great joys of this time for me.
Friends going through their own traumas and worrisome experiences continue to be thoughtful: some have given us money, grocery gift cards, handmade booklets, cards and letters, memberships to dream organizations. They’ve helped with resumes and the job search experience, promoted and shared my workshops and editing service, praised and published my writing, sent information about paying opportunties. There are too many to list here, way too many, but I am grateful.
I thought that my creativity would be stifled during a time where I had to turn my attention to making rent, paying for groceries and somehow figuring out how to com up with money for dental care (still haven’t figured that one out yet). I was wrong. It is enriched by this time and by the creative and caring people I encounter and pay attention to, by their podcasts, their artistic practices, their whimsy, their defiance of convention, their fight for social justice.
Here is a small list of where I go to for inspiration and hope. Let me know what inspires and gives you hope.
David Naimon, Between the Covers
I have been sharing and praising the caring and diligent work of David Naimon in his conversations with writers since I began listening to the podcast in 21-22. He has a way of opening up a conversation with a series of essay-like, accumulatory and detailed questions on the writers’ practices and work, their engagement with the world and personal stories that inform their work.
A dear friend for many years, they recently started a Substack. It is full of wonderful prompts, along with chronicles of their life, their creativity and their family. They live such a rainbow-whimsy-joyous-glorious life of infinite love and care and community. I admire them greatly. They remind me it is good to think and act in your own way, not to bow to peer pressure or the pressures of the conventional literary world on how to write, how to share your writing, what to write about.
rob mclennan, writer, publisher, champion extraordinaire
Fellow Ottawa resident, rob reviews, interviews, edits, publishes and champions writers, fellow small press publishers, books, chapbooks, and the small press community. He’s been exceptionally supportive of my work, and considering he described the first poems I presented in a workshop of his I took in 2005 as zombie poems, we’ve come a long way. As publisher of Chaudiere Books, he published my first poetry collection, Kiki. He has written glowing reviews of several of my publications, and he’s published my work in various places and as 10 chapbooks for above/ground press. In response to a request for a blurb for the Seasons, rob wrote “Amanda Earl is easily one of the most engaged and vibrant contemporary poets in Canada, and her work has been flying under the radar for far too long. Please pay attention.”
UK Writers, Publishers and Editors
Katy Wimhurst writes magic realism. and creates gorgeous ecovisual poetry. I love her work. She is exceptionally generous with her time and a dear friend, even though we have never met.
JP Seabright, my editor on my latest chapbook, The Seasons from Full House Literary, but also a friend who keeps in touch, despite being busy, creates wonderful playlists of music and is a daring writer.
Richard Capener, publisher of Hem Press, and formerly the Babel Tower Notice Board. Babel Tower is where I met a host of playful, experimental UK writers, many of whom I am still in touch with today. Hem Press has published a slate of fabulous, weird, compelling books within the short time of a few years.
Richard published my lusty long-poem, Trouble. He’s been an enthusiastic supporter of my weird ways since I sent him a prose poem remix of Venus in Furs called Language in Furs and he took it for Babel, surprising me greatly because I always assume this sort of thing is unpublishable. Then he invited me to read and I sang a sex-parody version of the Jesus Christ Superstar musical number You Don’t Know How To Love Me, entitled You Don’t Know What A Clit Is.
Steel Incisors, a visual poetry press run by James Knight, is another favourite. He goes against the typical black and white, grid-worshipping 20th-century concrete worshipping visual poetry enthusiasts with his press and his own work, making colourful oddities, full of apocalyptic horror. It’s inspiring.
Karenjit Sandhu’s work is whimsical and engaging. Take for example her Poetic Fragments from the Irritating Archive, a box full of wonderful tactile and engaging poetry.
What breaks me open? Right now Bjork is singing Quicksand. I’m about to play an exciting game of backgammon with my darling husband. My life is full of love, joy, friendship, community, creativity, eccentricity and whimsy.
''I am not eccentric. It’s just that I am more alive than most people. I am an unpopular electric eel set in a pond of goldfish.'' Edith Sitwell
I love being alive. Tell me what you love. Who breaks you open?