Laying the groundwork for some significant shifts in my writing life, mentally and physically, and inculcating tools and resources for myself has helped me align myself with my artistic ventures. I'll give them to you little by little. Through the process of writing, I have discovered transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary models for the work integration that I am seeking. Many around me are deep in love with the things and activities they love. What is great about the community in Ames is that it is small, yet the impact is huge. Gatherings are usually the center of attraction in any writer’s life after they are done being alone. For me, the art of gathering has reached consensus with workshop gatherings that manufacture you and selfless love gatherings full of abundance, food, and frolic! These two gatherings don’t concern the teaching classes or the ruminations, which deserve a blog or two.

It's pleasant to watch everything take shape and become one—the words, the intentions. After all, how much are you for somebody here?

Iowa teaches you a lot—how much can you be before you will be?

In some very happy news, my experimental poetic chapbook (it turns out that when you have a bunch of poems gathering intentions together, they become a chapbook for some reason) called for now, “Necro Other” was adjudged as a semi-finalist in the 2023 Tomaž Šalamun Prize. In the end, Hoa Nguyen selected Lian Sing's Revelations as the winner of this year's prize. Kate Colby's Thingking and Michael Bazzett's They: A Field Guide were this year's Editors' Choice selections, and their chapbooks also will be published by Factory Hollow Press. This is one of those first prizes I entered in poetry, and I could not have been happier with the motivation for my future projects and the much-needed nudge!

Essential to the creative process are the knowledge that comes from experience, the will to try something new, the tolerance for failure and criticism, the freedom from the constraints of conventional thought and societal bindings, and a setting conducive to the nourishment of the creator in their vulnerable condition of creation.

A broken singing o mine (I had accidentally recorded myself and then decided to infuse this singing):

Listen now · 1:12

1. A little ode to setting intentions-

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A recitation almost?

All pictures in this series have been clicked by Elizabeth Jayne Wenger (She is amazing! And if you are reading this, Wenger, yet again, thank you! Please do not stop!)

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A shorter rabbit hole

1. In The End (Mellen Gi & Tommee Profitt Remix)

2. Jo Koy Reveals How To Tell Asians Apart

3. Old Town Road vs. Ramta Jogi

4. Dark Skin & Getting Married

5. Talking with Planets by Nikola Tesla

   Playing with fire by Evie Shockley

something is always burning, passion,

pride, envy, desire, the internal organs

going chokingly up in smoke, as some-

thing outside the body exerts a pull

that drags us like a match across sand-

paper. something is always burning,

london, paris, detroit, l.a., the neighbor-

hoods no one outside seems to see until

they're backlit by flames, when the out-

siders, peering through dense, acrid,

black-&-orange-rimmed fumes, mis-

take their dark reflections for savages

altogether alien. how hot are the london

riots for west end pearls? how hot in tot-

tenham? if one bead of cream rolls down

one precious neck, heads will roll in brix-

ton: the science of sociology. the mark

duggan principle of cause and effect:

under conditions of sufficient pressure—

measured roughly in years + lead ÷ £s—

black blood is highly combustible.

Something amazing happened:

Listen now · 3:45

Wrote this letter listening to The Psychology of The Shaman (Inner Journey)

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Shalini Singh