At a Distance Yet On the Nose

“I can’t believe you came up with this before Covid—it’s too on the nose.” That’s what a friend said when I told her my 2020 poetry series was called “At a Distance.”

I swelled with protest. “I wrote most of these poems years ago! The whole “distance” theme emerged months before the pandemic!” My friend murmured something soothing about artists not always knowing what channel they are tapping into, and my indignation subsided.

She was being kind, but my friend had a point. The narrators of these 16 poems describe vivid encounters with gaps in time and space. The characters are sure one thing is happening, then they catch wind of something else. Many of us in 2020 can relate to that.

But if you’re weary of all things viral, you’ll be glad to know the poems are not explicitly about Covid or the miseries engendered by social distancing. However and whenever this work arrived, it doesn’t retrace the exact shape of our challenging present. Without meaning to do it, I’ve created a series of side angle views that describe how being apart can connect us in surprising ways.

Sharing experiences of separation feels appropriately paradoxical. So I’m beginning a series of audience led readings—on that consummate medium, Zoom.* These events will be small, casual, built for laughter and sighs. We’ll have all the ingredients we need to feel close, even at a distance. I hope you’ll join us.

Buy tickets here: https://bpt.me/4800938

*Yeah, bing, bing, on the nose again; I’m just going along for the synchronicity laden ride.