Yesterday was the last day of the Winter 2021 residency, which means today is the first official day of my final semester of my M.F.A.
I’m full of a lot of emotions. On the one hand, I feel like there’s so much left for me to learn that this can’t be the almost-end of my M.F.A. On the other hand, I’ve learned a hell of a lot since Fall Semester 2019, I’ve written a huge amount, and I’ve unearthed an almost dormant poetic existence that might not have been found, had it not been for this program. I can see my growth as a writer, and especially as a poet, not only in the ways I write poetry, but also in the development of poetic inspiration.
And this semester with be the culmination of everything I’ve learned.
Last night, after the students closed out the residency with a reading, I felt inspired to do some work on my thesis. This work wasn’t actually writing or revising anything, but rather the taking of pictures that I know I’ll want to use in my thesis/first poetry manuscript. I’ve been playing around with blackout/erasure poetry, found poetry, collage poetry, and really trying to utilize the space on the page in non-traditional/more experimental forms of poetry. So I spent time taking snapshots of the things I wanted to use in my thesis. And I have a phenomenal amount of material I can use, which is incredibly exciting.
It seems unbelievable that I’m already working on my first manuscript of poetry. It seems even more incredible that this work isn’t preliminary. I’m actually compiling poems and reworking existing poems to put together a manuscript documenting trauma, grief, and the body. I’m in a kind of state of shock about what this is, what it means, and where it’ll take me. In this last semester, I’ll be focusing on the process of revision, as well as the process of preparing a manuscript of work for publication. Whether or not I have a completed manuscript is an issue I’m saving for after graduation. My draft from last semester holds some 80 pages of poetry, double the minimum poetry page requirement. And while I’d love to spend the semester revising all of those pages, I also want to hyper-focus my revisions so that I can carry that experience with me out of the program.
Picking which poems to revise is going to be tough. But also worth it.
Today I meet virtually with my faculty mentor for the semester, an absolutely incredible writer, philosopher, and scholar, Asiya Wadud, to discuss how the revision process over the next five packets will go. I am beyond excited. And I have an amazing set of books to read this semester, too.
