REBECCA HART OLANDER

Spring has fully sprung around us, and like many teachers, I’m on the cusp of a new season in my work life. Summer is the time I spend editing the forthcoming Perugia Press book (The Book Eaters, by Carolina Hotchandani – out this fall!), working with summer interns, and opening our annual contest. Before I turn more toward editorial work, I want to acknowledge that it’s been a really special academic year: I’ve been teaching creative writing at Westfield State University in my eleventh year there, and for the first time I taught poetry workshops at Amherst College, this spring as the James Merrill Visiting Poet. Being part of classroom…

I’m deeply glad spring has arrived with more light and coming green. April is Poetry Month, but after attending the AWP Conference in Seattle earlier this month, I already feel steeped in poetry this March, especially poetry community. I loved the chance to spend time and share space with Perugia poets and all the folks that support our press, my CavanKerry community, and so many writer friends at the AWP bookfair and offsite celebrations. I’ve got a few readings coming up in the next week, so the end of March and the turn to April is feeling decidedly un-lamb like. As March roars to a close, I hope to see…

I’m not entirely sure how we find ourselves in December already. I bet you’re feeling the same way. And I bet we both felt this way last year, and the years before that. And yet, it still surprises, the year drawing to a close, the coming winter. Snow falls softly outside as I write this, our first of the season. As a teacher, I’m always marking milestones. Each semester, I get the chance to start fresh with new groups of students and re-visioned syllabi, while we also consistently hurtle toward endings. I’m both hyper aware of the weeks as they pass and at the same time they blur by in…

November 2nd marked the first birthday of my first book, Uncertain Acrobats. Abundant thanks to the village who helped bring this book into print and celebrated it with me over the past year. I’m looking forward to commemorating this milestone with a reading for my press, CavanKerry, with my new press mate, Dianne Silvestri. The event is a book launch for Dianne’s beautiful new collection, I Still Have My Fingerprints, and it will be held online on Monday, November 14, at 7:00pm ET. It’s free to attend, but registration is required. In other book news, Uncertain Acrobats was named a finalist for the 2022 Massachusetts Book Award! It was given…

I’m writing from a mixed place of anger and grief as well as one of joy-seeking. When the semester wraps for me, my own reading and writing is able to take a seat at the table for a season, and that’s where I’m at, soaking in a beautiful spring that feels fleeting and like it is spooling out generously all at once. But this May is darkened by war continuing to rage in Ukraine and, here at home, a siege on reproductive rights for women while at the same time we have failed once more to protect children and teachers from being murdered at their elementary school and Black people…