Spring 2026

“To become-water is not to surrender in despair. It is to dissolve into relation. To learn that fixing is not the only mode of response.” — Báyò Akómoláfé

Hello, friends.

I’ve been thinking a lot about water lately, out here in the desert. It’s early spring, and fresh snowmelt is burbling through the mountain creeks. Every few days, a storm moves through this wide valley, trailing long white veils of rain. The hills are flushing briefly green. By early summer, water here will appear mostly as absence — cracked mud in dry lake beds, bleached rings on stone. In that summer sun, the land is pale and dry as bone. It seems impossible that an inland sea of sweet water lives below. 

But this desert floats on the water of the underworld. An ancient aquifer lives below, holding billions of gallons of ancient water. It formed over eons as water percolated down through cracks and pores in permeable rock, accumulating in the gaps. This is slow work: some aquifer water fell as rain ten thousand years ago, before agriculture, before cities. Across the planet, more freshwater lives underground than in all the world’s rivers, lakes, and swamps combined.

The aquifer below this place surfaces here, in this valley that bears the oldest known traces of human habitation in North America — humans have called this valley home for at least 14,000 years. Ana Springs murmurs up through thick layers of rock, rising year-round at a steady 52 degrees. This is water that understands continuity — by the time it’s reached the earth’s surface, it’s spent at least a millennium filtering through the lava-rock aquifer. In this high desert, where rain and snow grow scarcer each year, Ana Springs is the region’s lifeblood, its heart.

This place and its water is one central node of my current work. My third book, Memory of a Larger Mind, is also focused on ancient water — I wrote it sitting on rapidly melting glaciers — cold, enamored, terrified. It will be published by Omnidawn in October 2026 and it’s now available for pre-order. Pre-ordering a book is one of the most helpful things you can do to support my work; it signals to booksellers and reviewers that the book has an interested audience, which has exponential effects. Some people I truly admire have said some very nice things about the work. I’m proud of this book, and excited for it to be in the world soon.  

Meanwhile, PROTOCOLS: An Erasure continues to find its way into the world. It was recently reviewed in both the LA Review of Books and Harvard Review — both pieces astonish me with their insights. I’ve learned more about this book from its readers than I ever could have imagined; this book really required other people to become itself. It was also recently named a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. I’m grateful for this recognition and hopeful that the book might find its way to more readers, at a time when its ideas and methods feel increasingly urgent. 

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WHERE I’LL BE:

I'm reading at Literary Arts in Portland on April 15 — that's this Wednesday — with the fantastic Margot Kahn and Rebecca Clarren, for an event called Mud & Cherry Blossoms: Poems for a Messy Season. If you're in Portland, I'd love to see you there.

Later this month I'll be keynoting the Tulsa Literary Festival April 23–26, talking about environmentalism and writing with co-keynote poet Ken Hada. I’ll also be teaching an ink-making workshop as part of the festival, a gesture towards remembering what it’s like to write with ink made of the earth on paper made of the earth, in the absence of autocorrect, AI, and screens. (I just exhaled. Did you?) While I’m there, I’ll get to hang out with the superb poet Quraysh Ali Lansana, who helped introduce my work to the Tulsa literary community. His most recent book, Killing the Negative, is a collaboration with the visual artist Joel Daniel Phillips. It’s strikingly beautiful, timely, and haunting in all the right ways. 

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TEACHING: 

I’ll be leading The Circle is Expanding, a poetry workshop focused on climate grief as part of Cara Levine’s brilliant exhibition at the Oregon Jewish Museum. Even if you can’t make the workshop, this is an exhibition worth seeing. The workshop is for everyone, no experience with poetry required, and I promise that we won’t be dwelling in the muck — the workshop is about transformation and inspiration. 

I’ll be leading Pigment + Place three times this spring and summer, and there's still time to join:

1. Coming up soon in May, I'll be at Camp Colton (May 15–17) in Oregon. 

2. Then later in May into June, I'm co-teaching with Heidi Gustafson at PLAYA in Summer Lake for a ten-night immersive residency (May 22–June 2). Teaching with Heidi, whose work I’ve long admired, will be especially transformative. 

Just one spot remains in both of those workshops.

3. Then August 6- 9, I'll be bringing Pigment + Place to The Narrows — a forest retreat accessible only by boat on Kootenay Lake in Nelson, British Columbia. There will be just 8 participants in this one and we’ll have catered meals, access to a beautiful studio, and the particular magic of arriving by water. All levels welcome, no experience necessary. If you've been curious about this practice and want to do it somewhere genuinely beautiful and remote, contact Erica Konrad for more information at thenarrowsartistretreat@gmail.com or visit thenarrowsbc.com.

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UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS: 

I’m focusing right now on exhibitions in late 2026 and 2027: 

The work I wrote about above for “Wildfire + Water: Artists and Scientists Adapting to Change” will be presented in a site-specific installation accompanied by a limited-edition book of poetry and essays. It will take place at PLAYA, in Summer Lake, Oregon, on September 26, 2026. Coming way out here is always entirely worth the trip. 

And in September 2027, I’ll have a solo exhibition of Memory of a Larger Mind, a project many years in the making (of which the books PROTOCOLS: An Erasure and the book Memory of a Larger Mind are a part). I’m working right now on a website redesign that will make the scope and goals of this project easier to understand. I’ve linked a prototype of the new page for it above — it’s not finished, so please don’t share it but poke around and tell me what you think. 

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Some older news, but still good:

“Disappearing glaciers of the Oregon Cascades, USA,” of which I am a co-author, was published in Annals of Glaciology. This is the research side of the work: the fieldwork, the numbers behind the poems. I'm proud to have a hand in both the scientific and the poetic, which are intimately linked.

I gave two interviews recently in which I was asked such good questions that I learned a great deal about my own work: one with Julie Carr as part of her smart, wide-ranging podcast Return the Key and one with Caroline Kessler in The Creative Independent.

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Thank you for reading, and happy spring. It was 75 degrees a few days ago but last night a snowstorm moved through. The blue-black hills are laced with ephemeral white which will soon melt, flow, and change. 

Daniela

P.S. - I’m hiring an assistant. The right person will be thoughtful, curious, and motivated to help me put my work into the world. Interest in art, ecology, and language are required. Excellent communication skills are important, too. If you or someone you know fits this description and is looking for meaningful part-time work, I'd love to hear from you. The position will offer mentorship and the chance to learn how an interdisciplinary art practice actually operates from the inside.