It’s about three months until my poetry collection comes out. (Three months as of April 21, exactly.)

It’s a moment where time is starting to get slippery, like it often does around important life events. It simultaneously feels like it’s never going to get here and is going to happen right as I blink.

It’s wild in the best way. It’s a dream I can hold in my hand, and I think that’s maybe the coolest thing ever. (Is this how people who are about to have kids feel? Maybe?)

Books too—and poetry specifically—are little time capsules. Because no one makes art in a vacuum. Everything happens in a moment, in the moment. Art is always a reflection of the world at large in some way, whether that’s on a macro or micro level. It’s like chemistry, in a way: feelings and bits of everyday life combine to make something evocative. Or powerful. Or emotional. Poetry, if you do it right, causes the reader to feel something. Doesn’t matter if it’s the feeling you intend. Because once the words are on paper, they don’t really belong to the author anymore. (Shoutout to Barthes’ death of the author theory!) It’s meaningless and, quite frankly, insulting to the reader to go back and say, “Well, what I intended was X or Y.” Because it’s either textual or it isn’t. And that’s not just having to do with poetry, too. Authors who write novels cannot retcon their way to meaning. [ahem] [steps down off soapbox]

There is something of the poet in every poem they write. But that’s not to say the poet is the speaker in every poem. (Browning in “Porphyria’s Lover” would then be admitting to, you know, murder. Or autoerotic asphyxiation and accidental death.) But you can’t write a poem and not leave something of yourself behind, even if it’s just, “I heard this thing in passing, and it inspired me.”

Offerings for Ordinary Gods was the collection I wrote for anyone who has ever been called too much by someone who was clearly much less. (Derogatory) It’s a collection I put together to show that the villain isn’t always who you’re conditioned to see as the villain. Because fairytales sometimes get it wrong. Because no one is ever just one thing, and no one gets to define you except you.

There is power in speaking. There is power in silence. There is power in love. There is power in letting everything fall to hell and making something new out of the rubble.

You can reinvent yourself at any time, but you can also return to the deepest roots of yourself. In that, there is always magick—don’t you ever let anyone tell you otherwise.

If there’s one thing you take away from my collection, I hope it’s that you don’t sacrifice the beautiful parts of yourself because of someone else’s bullshit. That you remember your own voice and your own power.

And if you haven’t preordered a copy, it’d mean the world to me, if you did. If you order from Inkwood Books, you can add a note during checkout (Instructions/comments box) that you’d like a signed copy and if/how you’d like it personalized. It’s available worldwide, though!

ALSO, it hasn’t been announced yet, but book launch is officially July 21!