A short newsletter that I meant to send out yesterday (I got home from Edinburgh late and exhausted) because my brain is still fried from finishing my first paper of the semester.
It’s starting to warm up a bit here in Scotland. The sun has come out a few times this week, which has been glorious.
I came across a W. S. Merwin poem earlier this week that completely stopped me in my tracks:
I’m still reading Natalie Diaz’s When My Brother Was An Aztec, planning on finishing it before I go home to the US for a week at the end of the month. I’m taking a really quick work trip to Richmond, VA to see Diaz give a reading, and I’m very, very excited for that.
I’ve been really into audiobooks this month: I listened to Sarah Moss’s Ghost Wall last week (one of my favorite books I read last year) and just finished Dog Songs by Mary Oliver (read by Oliver herself!) (another reread of a favorite from last year). I’m about to finish listening to A Thousand Mornings, also by Mary Oliver. If you’ve never listened to Oliver read her work aloud, I implore you to go do that right now. My hold on Voyager by Diana Gabaldon just arrived on Libby, so I’ll be returning to Outlander this week.
One thing I’m looking forward to next month is the StAnza International Poetry Festival here in St Andrews. I’m co-hosting the final event of the festival, an open mic, which should be lots of fun! Now I just have to decide which poem of mine to share…
What I’m Listening To: Don’t Forget Me by Maggie Rogers (her new single), Live from Spotify Studios by Niall Horan (especially the songs from Flicker, which I still think is his best album as a whole), my “writing and reading” playlist of calm/gentle classical music
What I’m Watching: Criminal Minds again. Also since when is there a season 16?
What I’m Eating: It is still very much soup season and I made a white bean and veggie soup a couple days ago and it was so good. Didn’t use a recipe, just kind of threw a whole bunch of veggies that I had in my fridge into a pot and let it simmer with some herbs for about 40 minutes. I never used to be a soup person, but I have definitely been converted.