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I think my boundaries are fairly fluid and ever shifting! Since having my second child I found myself shifting from fiction (young adult manuscripts) to poetry (with motherhood and children as key themes)

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Fluid and ever shifting is the name of the game, I think, especially if your kids are smaller! Was the change in genre related to how your time and energy charged with a second kid, do you think, or just where the work was taking you?

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I think it was a bit of both. After my first I held fast to the kind of writing and reading that I had been doing before, probably because it felt like keeping a part of the pre-motherhood me. With my second, I had been reading more poetry, having come across some fantastic female poets who wrote about being a woman, motherhood etc, which was in sharp contrast to those poets studied at school and university. I think I wanted a space to write about those experiences of motherhood. And IтАЩd also burned out drafting a manuscript with a baby and toddler and pandemic lockdowns all at the same time. I still have ideas for fiction, including some YA, but poetry is my priority for the moment. And I love the ability to explore different styles, subjects and tones in poetry without having to spend years working on just the one thing!

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I'm maybe a little biased because I came into my writing life as a poet, but I really think it's the optimal genre for life with little kids--you can pick it up and put it down, you can try out all kinds of new things--it's a very porous and expandable container for an unpredictable stage of life!

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Which poets do you read that are writing about motherhood? Would love to check them out

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a little personal recommendation--I co-edited an anthology, The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood, that's poems, essays, and writing prompts about a wide range of mothering experiences--and it's 50% off right now at UGA with the code 08SALE: https://ugapress.org/book/9780820360546/the-long-devotion/

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Thanks I just ordered it!

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Ahh I hope you love it тЭдя╕П

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I also loved The Long Devotion. The first poets I came across that were writing about motherhood were Kate Baer, Maggie Smith and Carrie Fountain. Also Bronwen Tate, some of Aimee NezhukumatathilтАЩs poems are on motherhood, Camille T Dungy, Hollie McNish (from England) and NancyтАЩs solo collection Pocket Universe, if you havenтАЩt already read it.

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What a great collection of poets! And thank you so much for including me in it. ЁЯШК I've got a good creatures with @Bronwen Tate coming up!

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