Not one Monumental Thing

The last month has been pretty big.

I had my last class of my undergrad. It wasn't this big monumental moment I thought it would be, when I first decided to return to uni. It felt impossibly far away, and that's even for an older student. My last class was an Introduction to Observational Drawing class, one I've been struggling with all semester as someone who never practiced visual arts aside from floristry. I had my butt on the dirt in Mystic Vale, a forest on campus grounds I somehow avoided for my entire degree (not on purpose), trying to, you know, see the forest for the trees.

I also got accepted into 3 MFA programs - a UBC bingo. Guelph waitlisted me, and I withdrew. UVic was a rejection, but I knew going in they would be the least likely. I had also applied for UVic with poetry, expecting not to get accepted for fiction; my project is a speculative, anti-capitalist and ecocritical novel.

I ended up accepting an offer from UBC for their Distance Education program, which lets me work on my novel and poetry, because they're a multi-genre program. Going to do it in person in Vancouver would have been amazing, but moving to Van comes with a host of (expensive) logistical challenges, and for a brief moment when I thought I would be moving, I realised how much my work at the campus community garden has come to mean to me. It's not like I took it for granted or anything, I just thought that, held up beside my dream to complete an MFA, it would be easier to say goodbye to. I was wrong.

Because of union shenanigans, I have to reapply to my own job. More on that in the next couple weeks. Hopefully I... you know... get hired again. Kinda awkward if I don't, but I'll figure it out. It'd be a dream to be able to keep working at the garden while completing my MFA online.

Some fun publication news:

I have three poems in The Temz Review you can read online here.

Two more poems coming out sometime before fall 2027 in Prairie Fire, and one sometime this summer or fall in The Malahat Review.

I'm especially chuffed about Malahat! I worked for them for 2 years and have been volunteering since, throughout my undergrad. They also chose a poem I'm pleasantly surprised by, which is a common theme with my published poems, and something I should reflect on more. Excited to share it and the two for PF once they're out.

Also got my funky reddit story, Suncatching, published in the very cool student-run lit magazine, The Warren Undergraduate Review. I'll find a way to upload it as a PDF and link it here when I do.

The journal I started for the garden, Sundew, launches issue 6 on April 16th. It's one of my favourites out of all of them aesthetically, and I think that has a lot to do with having so many people help out collaging.

I painted my nails for the first time in months today. Thought about shaving my legs and decided against it. Put on some folk music. Something something nature is healing. Or maybe I'm just procrastinating poetry edits.