Katerina Canyon

Day 18 of the Tupelo Press 30/30 Project There are moments when change feels less like a beginning and more like an unraveling. We shed pieces of ourselves, sometimes willingly, sometimes because the world has already begun pulling them away. Writing a poem every day for the Tupelo Press 30/30 Project has become an exercise in surrender. Not every thought arrives fully formed. Not every image offers an explanation. Sometimes the language must wander before it discovers what i

Day 15 of the Tupelo Press 30/30 Project There are seasons in our lives that have nothing to do with the weather. They arrive without warning, unsettle what we thought we knew, and ask us to examine what we are holding onto—and what we might finally be ready to release. I have been thinking about these seasons while spending time in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. The humid air, the movement of butterflies, the unfamiliar rhythms of the classroom, and the small cultural objects that b

By Katerina Canyon | Tupelo Press 30/30 Project What happens when love becomes something we no longer recognize? When the tenderness we once knew transforms into something monstrous, and we find ourselves searching for the meaning of affection in unfamiliar places? My latest poem for the Tupelo Press 30/30 Project, “Amoria,” explores the shifting landscape of love, vulnerability, and emotional survival. The poem begins with Agapia, a figure whose name evokes agape, the Greek

If you like today's poem, please donate to Tupelo Press Thanks to my dear friend, Fay Hamilton, for donating to this campaign. Some days, the poem arrives with its shirt untucked. I can feel the seams. I can see the scaffolding. The images have heat, but the shape is still arguing with itself. That is how my poems have felt lately, particularly draft-y, as if they came into the room before they were fully dressed. Part of that may be pressure. I am teaching a workshop in Indo

The wax did not move the way I wanted it to move. That was the first lesson. On Sunday, I went to Kampung Batik Giriloyo in Bantul, where I learned about the history of batik and made a small batik cloth of my own. I knew, before I even sat down, that I was not arriving as a skilled visual artist. I can live inside a poem for hours. I can revise a line until it stops wobbling. But give me cloth, wax, dye, and a tool I do not know how to hold, and I become a beginner in the mo

Donate to Tupelo Press! Some poems begin as love poems and then refuse to stay in the room. “Xanadu” started with Geoff and me. One or two people will know why I titled it "Xanadu." It began with the funny, tender mismatch of how bodies and spirits age at different speeds. I look young, but I feel old. He feels young, but looks old. That little exchange felt domestic at first, even playful. Then the poem opened a side door. In walked an owl. Then mice. Then a snake’s shadow.

Please show your support by donating to Tupelo Press today. The body can become a weather report before the sky does. It is day 10 of the 30/30 Project for Tupelo Press, and I have finished my first week in Indonesia. That sentence sounds like progress, because it is. Ten poems in ten days. One week in a new country. New air, new food, new light, new rhythms. A life with evidence of motion. But there is also the quieter truth: I am not fine physically. That is the strange wo

We had a donation from an anonymous supporter today. Thank you! If you would like to be publicly recognize, drop me a long. In the meantime, We have $120 to go before I reach my fundraising goal. If you have appreciating learning about my poetic process, please donate to Tupelo Press. There are moments when a phone is a miracle and a cruel little window at the same time. Two days ago, that window held my grandson. My daughter has just had her baby, my third grandchild, and fo

There is a mistake on the 30/30 Project site today. The wrong poem was accidentally published for Day 7. I am sure it will be fixed as soon as the U.S. work day begins, but I did not want to let the day pass without sharing the correct poem here. The poem for today is called “Hungry.” Thank you to Callie Tolman for donating. That gift means a great deal to me. I am now halfway toward my goal, and I am grateful for every person who has read, shared, encouraged, or donated duri

I made it to Yogyakarta safe and sound and then proceeded to sleep for twelve hours. Now it is 4:00 in the morning, and I have lost all concept of time. I have been trying to write a short blog post each day about the poem appearing in the Tupelo Press 30/30 Project, but somewhere between Jakarta, Yogyakarta, airplanes, hotels, and twelve hours of sleep, I managed to lose track of the sequence. Yesterday’s poem was “Tap a Vein.” I wrote it because Beverly asked me to write a