It feels like an ordinary Tuesday
But today is the day that DARK BEDS is released! If you’ve launched any kind of creative project into the world, you know the strange vulnerability of making something in near-solitude, then bringing it forth into the public eye.
Right now, I’m feeling extra vulnerable and strange. My mom died a few weeks ago and the juxtaposition between the quiet, internal space of grieving and the boisterous energy of LAUNCH PARTY! is profound. And now, also, the horrifying juxtaposition between war and atrocities in the Middle East and the promotion of a new poetry collection.
I’m trying to embrace the contradictions somehow. Trying to walk forward though the light and the shadow. I’ll be wearing sequins and glitter at my launch at the Brattleboro Literary Festival this Friday night, but also reading poems about grief and love, mortality and loss, including “The Long Goodbye,” just featured on The Slowdown.
The only way I know how to show up is to be present with everything going on. That’s the gift of poetry— it can hold all of this mess, all of our pain.
I’m grateful for the chance to read with five women poets at the June Road Press Fall Celebration in September. We shared poems and thoughts about the creative process, putting a book together, the publishing world, finding community, and more.
If you missed the virtual event, you can watch the video HERE (my reading starts at15:45, but don’t skip Mariella Saavedra Carquin’s gorgeous poems from her debut, MAPS YOU CAN’T MAKE).
People told me to write a novel
about the experiences in DARK BEDS. But I’m a poet not a novelist, so I wrote the only book I knew how to write. A book that was meant to take its sweet time, to be born in this chapter of my life. I hope it will be a gift to you. It already feels like one to me.
To learn more about the origins of DARK BEDS, check out this short author interview I did with my wonderful publisher, Sara Arnold of June Road Press.
You can now get free shipping
when you order straight from June Road Press. Use promo code LAUNCHPARTY through October 17!!! Thank you so much for supporting independent publishing! And thank you June Road Press for supporting poets ❤️
New Books I Love
Does the Earth by Meg Reynolds. I’m obsessed with these urgent, intimate poems of sex and hunger, procreation and pregnancy loss, mothering and daughtering and the embodied truths of women. Vermont poet Reynolds is the feminist kindred spirit I didn’t realize I needed. Hoping to read with her in 2024!
“The animal
need for you falls inside my body all day long.”
- Meg Reynolds, “Daughter III”
I Do Everything I’m Told by Megan Fernandes. I was riveted by this title and the collection does not disappoint. These restless queer love poems travel the world, embracing contradictions and surrealism with biting wit. Equally intoxicating and disturbing, Fernandes’ wild imagination will shake you up in the best way. Here is my favorite poem in the book:
“I don’t believe in kin by blood,
but I believe poems can give form to the formless…”
- Megan Fernandes, “Orlando”
The Wonder State by Sara Flannery Murphy. I’d been looking for a fast-paced novel to whisk me away from reality and Murphy came through yet again. I disappeared into this spellbinding thriller set in Eternal Springs, a small town in the Ozarks where everyone knows each other and secrets simmer beneath the lush surface. Full of stunning plot twists, artist dreams, magical houses, and the lure of an other-worldly portal, The Wonder State’s driving force is the love between two high school best friends. Stayed up late finishing this one.
Thanks for getting into Girl Trouble with me. Sending ease for your day today.
xo Diana
P.S. What is Mom Rage actually? I have so many feelings about this.
P.P.S. “I guess I just instinctively get how to be a mom.” Damn I’m so maternal 🎵
Congratulations, Diana. Sending love, light, peace and comfort for your grief, and hope you get to fully enjoy celebrating this wonderful accomplishment. xo
Congratulations on your publication day!
And also so sorry for the passing of your mother. There's that saying i heard a few years ago, Welcome to the club. Sorry you could make it
I too am a member of that club.
I love the cover of your new book and I look forward to picking it up.