Recap of Autumn 2024

a holiday miracle in which the rap battle between Kendrick Lamar and Drake plays no significant role

Somehow, I kept the ‘Stack moving along this semester. A true holiday miracle! This fall has been one of the most challenging in my life, let me tell ya. My family responsibilities increased and my health took a dip after I traveled.During the semester, I didn’t write as much as I would like on some pieces that I had started earlier this year. I didn’t complete a few drafts that I thought I would by the end of the semester.

One of my classmates, my homie Jenny Loveland, shared Meghan O’ Rourke’s reflection on the effort that juggling parenting and writing takes. Now throw in chronic illness, and trying to bounce back from a trip that wiped me out, moving in with my honey bunny, assessing the (in) adequacies of one’s support resources (emotional, medical, and holistic) and trying to get one's self back onto the kidney transplant list and you will get a taste of what this Fall was like for me.

BUT, and that’s a big ole Detroit but, my time working with my faculty Kellie Wells was roundabout right what the doctor ordered. See what I did there? I wanted to work with her after hearing her read her “fiction” writing in my first residency. Part of my work is the creation of what me and a couple others call magical realism nonfiction. I put “fiction” in quotes because Wells’ work has a mythological quality that I want to learn from. Fiction? It all feels true to me. I also approached her to learn from her commitment to nonlinear narratives. In this program, I’ve been told that my work reminded readers of collage. I loved the feedback Kellie gave to hone this aspect of my work, rather than pushing it back towards linearity.

Still, there’s a part of me that feels regret, that I didn’t write as much as I had hoped and didn’t get all the input that I could have.

From her hilarious bio I learned that Kellie Wells was born Ingeborg Traumschlaf and worked closely with Sigmund Freud. She “ died standing up, toothless and singing, in 1984, in Kingdom Come, Kansas, the capital of misspent sleep.” So the fact that we worked together shows the continuity of my work with the deceased.She sure seemed alive to me! I had been trying to keep my African Traditional Religion, my Eggungun, my Oya, my Ajuba and my altar work separate from my American MFA education but as you can see, the spirits have different ideas and laugh at our planning.