I am once again returning to this site for updates, as I seem to do in July.
The biggest updates are life updates, and the best of them all is that Monique and I welcomed our baby daughter into the world in March of this year. The joy and light she brings us each day is immeasurable. Here we are with her near Cape May, New Jersey earlier this month.
I completed the term of my Postdoctoral Teaching Fellowship in English at New York University in the spring, and next month I will be embarking on a new chapter as a Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in Climate and Inequality at The Climate Museum in New York City. I couldn't be more excited to join the folks at the museum as they enter an exciting period of growth and work toward the establishment of a permanent location in the city!
And, while I largely took a hiatus from submitting poetry during the period of my teaching postdoc, I did publish a new one, written quickly and published while fresh, responding to Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February. "Elegy in Ash" was published in Poets Reading the News on February 28th.
I also served as Poet in Residence at Trinity Lower East Side Lutheran Parish during the seasons of Advent and Christmas, 2021-2022, and wrote a cycle of liturgical poems over the course of the residency that were read in worship. I have recently begun circulating poems from that cycle, and one of them, "What Child," will be published in The Christian Century this December. Keep an eye out for that!
And my work on the new edition of Liberty Hyde Bailey's classic, inspirational work of educational philosophy, The Nature-Study Idea, is nearly complete. The book will inaugurate The Liberty Hyde Bailey Library for Cornell University Press. David Orr has written the foreword, and another incredible writer is at work on a special "essay for educators" to put Bailey's work into context with what is happening in the world of outdoor education right now. I can't wait to share it with the world, hopefully by next year!
A lot more is in the hopper, and I hope to keep this site better updated as things progress. I completed my poetry manuscript, To Leave for Our Own Country, and am now actively circulating it among what reputable publishers and book contests I can find. It represents over a decade of my poetic output, and I can't wait for it to find a good home.
Until next time, in peace and hope,
John