Rhythms of Midwinter
there's magic afoot
We’ve turned the corner of the year
as Katherine May wrote in her magnificent book, Wintering. I’m filled with relief and gratitude. Over a month since the winter solstice and we’re past the darkest months, the shortest days. My Happy Lite broke but I think I’ll be okay without it. More and more light is coming, the promise of Aquarian sun blazing on snowpack.
I’ll be honest, I was happy to leave 2023 behind. It was a particularly rough one, involving family crisis, death, and loss, compounded by the horrors of violence in the world. Somehow I managed to launch one book and finish another and get my MFA in poetry after a 20-year hiatus. I know it was a hard year for many of you too, and hope you give yourself time to pause, celebrate what you can, and honor your own journey.
Reflection, not resolution
I love the energy and momentum of the new year, and although I abhor traditional resolutions, I’m trying to set more intentions, jotting them down in my journal or improvising them on a walk with the dog. My MFA mentor Chen Chen talked about a workshop with poet Morgan Parker, in which she urged writers to view intentions as a gentle reminder to reflect— not as a method of goal-setting or accomplishing tasks. For example:
I intend to trust my intuition
I intend invite ease into my life
I intend to make space for more connection with others
I’m using the New and Full Moons as a time to read tarot cards and set a few intentions, keeping them loose and free-flowing. I want to break out of the capitalist mindset that evaluates a human being or a human day according to “productivity.” I loved this conversation with brilliant thinker, writer, and artist Jenny Odell about her book Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock. I haven’t read the book yet but it’s on my list.
What intentions might you set on the Full Moon in Leo this Thursday 1/25? Be prepared— it’s a big fat juicy one!🌕🌖🌗
Write with me
Now that I’ve finished my MFA, I have room for a few new writing clients. Do you have a project you’ve been dreaming of bringing into the world? I love working with writers of all experience levels, at all stages of the creative process. My editing style is compassionate, thorough, and timely, grounded in your vision and your voice.
Curious? Read my client testimonials HERE, then book a free discovery call so we can talk about your project.
Join me for Nature & Desire in February
I can’t wait to lead a generative workshop delving into some of my obsessions— Nature & Desire— at Writers in Progress. Open to poets and curious prose writers, this Saturday morning offering is online AND in-person at the beautiful Writers in Progress studio in Florence MA.
Desire is a force that can spark creative inspiration, propel our writing forward, and rivet our readers. So how can we find new ways to articulate desire in our work? For centuries, poets have turned to nature as a rich source of writing about desire. In this half-day workshop, we’ll mine the natural world for images and language that embody desire in all its forms– not just hunger for a beloved, but longing— for connection, for transformation, for youth, for self-love, for a just world…
We’ll start the day by exploring poems by writers who draw on nature to add texture, intensity, and emotional depth to their work; then we’ll use their lines as prompts to spark our own writing. In a supportive atmosphere, we’ll share our work and receive affirming feedback from the group. You’ll leave with a cache of new ideas to sustain your momentum. $75. Register HERE.
Hot off the press
I set a poem on fire. Smoke was wafting across the zoom screen at the June Road Press Solstice Reading. I managed to smother the flames, keep calm and carry on reading.
It was a new poem, read aloud for the first time.
Maybe this will become my signature move at poetry events, like Hendrix and his guitar. It’s all captured on video HERE (🔥 at 1:15 in).
DARK BEDS in the news & on the road
I’m honored and humbled to have this insightful review of DARK BEDS in Literary Mama! Check out “Exploring the Limitations of Motherhood” by poet and editor Jennifer Saunders:
In lush and musical verse, Diana Whitney’s Dark Beds explores the tensions inherent in family life: its attractions and frustrations, the temptations to shatter it, life’s unavoidable dangers, the parents and children and lovers, “everyone’s roots / tangled up in each other.”
How I loved doing this interview in Electric Literature with writer Jennifer Berney, author of The Other Mothers, a memoir of queer family-making that’s one of my favorite books. We talked about “the ache of desire that is often the backdrop of the caregiving years” and so much more.
Sunday, January 28 @ 2 pm:
I’m reading in a beautiful gathering of voices at THIS-WORLDLY MIDWINTER MAGIC: A Communal Feast of Poetry and Music at Next Stage Arts in Putney, VT.
Friday, February 2 @ 7 pm:
I’ll be the featured reader at The Word at Workshop 13, a supercool cultural arts center in Ware, MA. It’s open mic so bring a piece of writing to share!
Stay tuned for more DARK BEDS Book Tour dates, including at the Wheelwrite Imaginarium, a new bookshop with coffee/tea in Manchester, VT.
Books I’m loving
As a quintuple Gemini, I like to read (and reread) many books at once. Here’s a shortlist of current faves:
When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities by Chen Chen. This wild, playful, and moving debut explores the complicated grief and love of family bonds, ranging in tone from the meditative to the rant.
Knock Wood by Jennifer Militello. Haunting and courageous, this memoir-in-essays by acclaimed poet Militello examines time, memory, and the body with lyric precision.
The Middle Daughter by Chika Unigwe. A lush and gripping novel of sisterhood and belonging by award-winning author Unigwe, The Middle Daughter is a retelling of the Hades and Persephone myth within a Nigerian family.
Marigold and Rose: a fiction by Louise Glück. I adore this tale of infant twins written by one of the most brilliant poets of our time. Funny and poignant, the story follows the preverbal babies through their experience of stroller-walks and alphabet books, dreams and curiosity about parents, delving into the mysteries of language, time, and art-making.
“Life was difficult: finally you figured out how to climb the stairs. Unimaginably high, those stairs. Each stair came up to her waist. She would lean with her two arms on top of the stair, and then with great effort hoist herself up on her hands and knees. And then have to stand up and repeat the whole thing. I learned, Marigold thought, and then I fell to the bottom. Rose was looking down at me.”
- Louise Glück, Marigold and Rose
Essential short reads & listens
Skoo: A love story: beautiful essay about the end of a marriage, in Electric Literature.
Did an abortion ban cost a young Texas woman her life?- incisive reporting in The New Yorker about the cost of abortion bans.
E. Jean Carroll on her case against Donald Trump, on The New Yorker Radio Hour:
"I'm a crone, I'm an elderly woman, but I think we've got a few good years left to figure out a way to bring—well, to end—the culture of sexual violence."
✊Please give Carroll the Nobel Prize in Courage for her outspoken fight against rape culture and the former predator-in-chief.
Thanks for getting into Girl Trouble with me. Stay in touch and let the soft animal of your body loves what it loves.
xo Diana
P.S. I critiqued biased coverage in the local paper in this Letter to the Editor, about our school district’s sexual abuse investigation.
P.P.S. You can still get your copy of DARK BEDS here… Valentine’s gift for yourself or a friend? ❤️
P.P.P.S. Bears munching apples and hickory nuts (volume on!) 🐻🍎
Congratulations, Diana! xo
Compelling, as lways, Diana. Keep em comin'!