Summer Taster Sessions

“this poem is not so much about a beach

as it is about arriving”

~ from Summering in Wildwood, NJ by Kayleb Rae Candrilli

August is over and it’s raining outside my window. These last couple of weeks have left me feeling grateful, excited and contemplative. Both Neal and I are August babies, so celebrated our birthdays as well as running our summer taster sessions, in advance of our full poetry courses, in the latter half of the month. I’ve never really been big on birthdays, not because of a fear of mortality or growing vulnerability-I think being disabled in this world makes you stare those realities in the face far more frequently than once a year- but more a general apathy towards date significance.

This year feels a little different though. A friend asked me if I had any birthday resolutions, something I’d never considered before. I find notions of mandatory significance don’t compute well with how I think and feel, but to choose significance through change, that I can get on board with. I recently read Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower for a book club, and the axiom “All that you touch, you change. All that you change changes you” has been living in my chest since reading it. I hope that the work I have put into and intend to continue putting into Tentacles acts as a manifestation of the change I want to see and be part of.

Sign for our summer taster workshop at Nottingham Playhouse

I’ve found joy and solace in writing since I was a child. My first published poem was a list of facts about dolphins that my 8 year old self was clearly bursting to share with others. I’ve been part of workshops and writing groups for over a decade, but never found the connection and community I’ve so often read about and seen others experience. Intentional community building takes time, and when you are frequently ill and chronically fatigued, that time can stretch on endlessly! Honing your craft also takes time and feedback from people you trust, who can help you see the shape of the poem you’re creating. I’m trying to balance an acceptance of my slower pace, the ways I struggle to connect, with a commitment to persevering in efforts to do so. It’s sometimes hard not to get defeatist about it- it’s not that I’ve not tried in the past! But maybe by directing those efforts into community that I hope gets where I’m coming from, perhaps feels and wants the same, maybe that’s the key. I have several dear friends I’ve met through poetry over the years, but no sense of creative belonging. So this is my birthday resolution! To keep building spaces: physical and digital, practical and emotional, that are by and for disabled folk.

On my way to the workshop this week, I saw a sight that made me chuckle and I had to stop to take a picture- a giant teddy bear, alone, sitting at a bus stop. The bear was so perfectly placed, patiently waiting for the number 24. A picture that disrupts the malaise of the everyday, a jolt out of the ordinary. Oddness. I could try to make this into a metaphor about normalcy and the right to public spaces and services- I have a habit of grandstanding instead of choosing fun. But I think sometimes it’s better to simply lean into an uncomplicated absurdity. To find joy in the silly. To smile at the thought of a teddy on the bus.

Big ted waiting for the bus