Okapis and Nightingales

         I’m very excited to announce that two of my poems were published this month.  I’ll send you to the publications to read the poems, and today’s post is the background behind each of them.

        First, my poem “Okapis” appeared in 4LPH4NUM3R1C, episode 3, “Florid Fauna.”  The call was specifically for poems that are all about how they sound read aloud, and you can hear my poem as well as reading it here.  I was particularly excited to have this poem find a good home because it’s admittedly a bit of an oddity.  I wrote the first version back in 1996 as an exercise in playing with the sound of language.  I think I chose okapis as my subject primarily because I liked the sound of the word.  This is all about the alliteration and assonance, rhythm and repetition, and of course the use of luscious and lovely words like “languorous,” and “saunter.”  But yes, it’s also

a love poem to the mysterious and beautiful okapis, which have lots of wonderful traits including their gorgeously striped haunches and their indigo tongues.

        In 1998 I sketched okapi legs at the Harvard Museum of Natural History while I was on an assignment to collect things that attracted me, and for many years I had okapis on my list of things I’d like to make into a block print.  In 2024 I finally got around to it.  Meanwhile I had reworked my okapi poem, but there weren’t a lot of places to send it that seemed like a good fit.  It’s not deep, or emotional, or political, or even, despite the last line, philosophical!  But it pleases me, I’m so glad it pleased the editors of 4LPH4NUM3R1C, and I hope it pleases you.

        The second poem, “Jorinde Remembers,” was published in the September 29th issue of Strange Horizons.  In celebration of the magazine’s 25th anniversary they chose pieces with themes of memory and time for this issue, which you can read here.  I wrote this poem in April as part of my National Poetry Month poem-a-day practice.  It’s about “Jorinde and Joringel,” one of the lesser known (or perhaps medium-known) fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm.  For this I was not reimagining or changing any of the details of the story; rather I was imagining how it would really feel to live such an experience of being transformed into a nightingale.  If you’re not familiar with this fairy tale and want to read it, you can find it here.  For me much of the appeal of the fairy tale is the strange, melancholy atmosphere, and I wanted to keep that in my own poem.  I’m really proud that my poem found a place in such a wonderful magazine.

        As for the illustration, it’s a collage of two other block prints: the owl in the forest comes from my block print “Midnight,” and the castle comes from “Castle on a Bay.”  I collaged the two together to illustrate the lines “Until suddenly the castle walls loomed from the weird shadows / And the owl came circling three times with its nightfall wings.”  (The owl is the wicked witch in the fairy tale, but I pictured it as a creature of spiritual beauty in my original piece.  To be fair, the castle was subject to the same treatment: in the fairy tale it’s a cursed place, while my original block print depicts a place I have a great deal of affection for!  You can also read more about the block prints Midnight and Castle on a Bay in past blog posts.)  I created an illustration for this poem because it’s one that will be included in my upcoming book Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns.

        The Kickstarter campaign for Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns is over, but late pledges are now a thing on Kickstarter, so if you’re curious you should go check it out.  You can still get all the special pledge rewards if you want.

[Pictures: Okapis, rubber block print by AEGNydam, 2024 (image from NydamPrints.com);

Illustration for “Jorinde Remembers,” from rubber block prints by AEGNydam (Castle on a Bay at NydamPrints.com).]