What's on My Desk
WHAT’S ON MY DESK
These are the two main projects I’m working on these days, one a seed just planted, the other about to be harvested:
Memoir:
FROM THE CYCLOPS CAVE:
A BRAIDED MEMOIR
For three years I’ve been writing this story, making my first deep dive into book-length prose, braiding together the story of my fragmented childhood (one voice in the narrative) with that of myself as an adult (the second narrative voice), living on a remote Aegean island, seeking solitude while struggling with my demons.
I decided to write FROM THE CYCLOPS CAVE mainly because, although I have published several books of poetry, none lays out in detail or cogent order the broad sweep of events that led me from a turbulent California boyhood to this land I now call home. And none shows how a life void of family bonds can go terribly wrong and still be put right through immersion into a new culture and a deep-seated devotion to writing.
At this point I’m sending it out to publishers while still tinkering with the text.
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And I'm pleased to announce that three Stateside journals have accepted excerpts from my memoir:
The Compass recently published "Lamb,"
Talking River "The Luckiest Boy in the World" and Weekly Hubris "Goat Leaps."
Haibun
My brother died recently. The one person in my family I’ve always felt close to. So this is a project about grieving. About going deep into loss while (by) experimenting with a form new to me, the haibun, a Japanese approach to narrative that blends prose with poetry. And it’s about what I’ll find on the other side of loss, wherever the text may lead me. So it’s about wonder too.