A mass of feathers: love poems

my first poetry collection published yesterday

Whenever I reach a milestone, I imagine my younger self here too. For my phone background, I often use a photograph of myself at age 6 or 8 or 10 to remember that I literally carry her with me. At the moment, it’s a photo of me on a dock, messy hair, squinting in the sun, arms snuggled into my lifejacket.

Yesterday, my first poetry collection was published. A mass of feathers: love poems (Bottlecap Press). And I’m so excited and nervous to share it.

I have very recent memories of submitting poems with far more rejections than acceptances (something I’ve repeated over a hundred times minimum). But when it comes to writing poetry there’s a deeper, older memory of my younger self that I carry too.

In 6th grade, we received an assignment to write two poems and we illustrated our poems to be displayed during parent-teacher night. I wrote about things I had no experience with at the time–violence, suffering–like Edgar Allan Poe (who I read constantly).

But, when we arrived for parent-teacher night, only my classmates' poems were posted on the walls, their illustrations of daffodils, the sun, the moon. My teacher had called my mother a few nights before, “Is Rachel ok? Her poems were very disturbing. They’re well-written, but we won’t be able to display them at parent-teacher night.”

I stopped writing poems after that. At least I think I did outside of the classroom. When I look through boxes of journals, they don’t reappear until the past five years or so. So like an archaeologist looking back at relics, it seems like a pivotal moment.

I still interacted with poetry. In college, I used some of Emily Dickinson’s poems to work with a group of dancers to create a co-choreographed piece we performed at the museum and her home in Amherst. I continued to read poetry and went to readings once in a while.

But in the past handful of years, in particular, I’ve made my way back to writing it.

Poetry became a lifeline when I was diagnosed with cancer at 29. My copy of

Maggie Smith

’s Good Bones was the only thing I had with me minutes before my biopsy. During treatments, poems were the only thing I could read.

They were fresh popped popcorn I could savor one at a time.

I do not have any formal education, just my paper mentors. Only in the past couple of years have I read my poetry at the graves of my grandparents and at a friend’s wedding. The rest I kept for myself and my revisions and shaping.

But even in a grassy plot with eight other people, there was something about reading my own words aloud that brought me back to the girl I was, a nesting-doll inside me.

In the past year or so, I’ve had poems published in Rising Phoenix Review, Emerge Literary Journal’s scissors and spackle publication, Hole in the Head Review, on Substack here and in friend’s publications among others. And as of today, I can say I have my first hold-in-your-hands (!) chapbook to share.

And here’s what is special about it being a chapbook for me. Historically, chapbooks (small, pocket-sized, hand-made printed stories or poems) were some of the first works of democratized printing in 16th century Europe. With the advent of chapbooks, sharing writing wasn’t reserved only for the wealthy with access to printing presses, it was available for the masses.

So, as someone who did not study poetry, who does not have an MFA and only came back to poetry as an adult, it’s fitting to me that the collection itself is a reminder that reading and writing poetry is for absolutely anyone.

I hope you’ll consider getting a copy of your own.

It’s made up of love poems–to my grandparents who I lost within 6 months of one another, to my body during a painful and hopeful journey with cancer, to my partners in this life, both human and winged. It was a small blessing to string together the themes, to spend time with my past selves.

I hope to share this collection with whoever is interested. In a way, to use scotch tape to finally stick them up on the classroom walls. Here’s a preview of one of the poems (originally published in Hole in the Head Review and now in A mass of feathers: love poems with Bottlecap Press).

If you’d like to purchase a copy of this little collection ($10), you can do that on the Bottlecap Press site or order directly from me if you’re local or I’ll see you sometime soon.

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What I’m loving right now:

• Bird watching (speaking of things that are for everyone)—we went on a hike the other day and realized we have more bird diversity in our own backyard than in the woods nearby, I now call it our bird sanctuary

• You are here: poetry in the natural world edited by Ada Limon—which was a perfect read for national poetry month in April

• It’s been one year since our Pack-up-and-Go surprise vacation to New Orleans which has me thinking about how great a surprise trip is (plus they now have travel guides you can purchase for a city, much cheaper than the full trip)

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