When I wrote each day, I opted not to sit at the big desk in my office, or at the smaller desk in my bedroom, but out on the front porch, where I set up a small collapsible card table and rolled out a desk chair. There I felt like I was withdrawn from the world enough to concentrate, but still, in a way, part of the life of the street and neighborhood. Sometimes I was happy to see people strolling by or doing yard work, and other times, when I was particularly absorbed, I felt irrationally invaded when they would look up toward the porch at me – as though a stranger had just peered into my living room windows. But I liked that tension of simultaneous connection and disconnection from the world. And, in a way, this tension is very similar to the one I feel animates poems, which are really more about desire for connection than actually finding it. We never know, after all, in the midst of writing a poem, whether there will be an audience or an individual person who is intimately reached by what we have written. All we can experience is the wish for that union of common understanding.
You can read the rest of her post here. For more information about the writing residency itself, and to apply, visit the McCullers Center website. Never applied for a writing residency before? Don't be shy. The process is simple; the potential result, as Jessica shows us, is complex, unexpected, and wonderful.
--MD
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