Five months after the publication of The Surrender Theory in 2022, I had absolutely no ideas for my next collection. I was still writing, but it was directionless scribbling. Poems about this thing and that thing. Nothing that felt interesting enough to expand into a full book. Certainly nothing that spoke to me in the way that The Surrender Theory’s narrative had spoken to me. They say that you have your whole life to write your first book, and then only a few years to write your second. While I think everyone’s writing journey can cajole them into different timelines, there’s truth in wanting to follow up your first book with something else sooner rather than later. Though nobody was placing that pressure on me, I felt it anyway.
I met up with my close friends in Vancouver, at the end of July in 2022. We lived all over the country—Washington state, New York, Connecticut, and Tennessee—and this was our second time meeting up as a group. On our last night together, I confessed in the glow of the television and warmth of an edible that I felt like I was always performing. Even in my most intimate relationships, I often had this sensation that I was wearing a mask that I couldn’t quite take off for fear of seeing what was underneath. As writers tend to do, they told me I should write about it.
For the last (almost) two years, I’ve been trying to explore this concept. When, and why, do we perform with others? What can be said about the nature of performance? What would happen if every person you interacted with was just another actor, playing the role assigned to them?
Having been a semi-theater kid growing up (in the school musicals but always in the background, a lover of the genre but not terribly well-rounded), I gravitated towards the idea of using theatrical elements to tell this story. How would my poems look if I gave them characters? How could I meld the elements of a play with the elements of a poem?
It hasn’t been easy to write this book. I’ve put it aside for months on end, contemplated giving up because the formatting I gave myself felt too difficult to sustain. I moved around poems and took them out and wrote new ones and took those out too. I lamented my lack of time to write at all, with juggling the other projects and responsibilities I’ve taken on since the publication of my first book. At times it felt like it would never be finished, and I came close to shoving it in a drawer and trying something else entirely.
But after a successful NaPoWriMo and hours of time dedicated to finally putting the damn pieces in order, it happened. During my writing retreat with ari b. cofer in Seattle, Washington, I knew it was done. Not edited, of course, but put together. I had a book. Another book.
It’s with a huge, relieved, smile on my face that I can announce that my next collection of poems, Burning The Ghost Light, is slated for publication in Fall of 2025.
I feel so grateful to be working again with Central Avenue, the publisher that gave The Surrender Theory such a good home. The folks at Central Avenue, Michelle especially, have shown nothing less than utter enthusiasm towards my work. It is with this enthusiasm behind me that I’m able to put these poems out into the world, and eventually into all of your hands.
More information will be coming throughout the next year as this book gets closer and closer to its birthday. Until then, thank you for reading along. Thank you for being here and cheering alongside me as I continue my writing. This is a project that has come to mean a great deal to me. I hope it will come to mean a great deal to you, too.
Until next time,
Caitlin
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