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Poem Published in Wild Roof Journal
Negative Land | Issue 16 | September 2022
I am honored to have my poem Negative Land published in Issue 16 of Wild Roof Journal! Please check out the issue!
About the Poem
Negative Land is a poem that sprung from a free-write exercise during a Sabrina Benaim workshop I took through Button Poetry University in April 2022.
We did an exercise where we made a list of 10 adjectives, 10 verbs, and 10 nouns. We used these lists in various ways to power a series of different writing prompts. The last prompt was to take one of the verbs and write 10 lines. I chose the verb “dig” and the 10 lines that came out were pretty close to the finished version of this poem.
The poem is about impermanence; that of small things like a mouth burn and larger things like a home. When we are born, we create a void, an imbalance in energy, and when we die will repay that back by filling in the hole. Along the way we leave many things broken and less ordered, unavoidable entropy.
Process wise, I made a number of small revisions in the weeks following the first draft. The ending line took the most work (as it always does) to end on something that felt final and called back to earlier lines about permanence and ritual. I hope you enjoy.
