A Drop in the Dry Season

I'm publishing a chapbook

Hello,

A Drop in the Dry Season, my poetry chapbook, is coming out December 3. Pre orders are available now. This is the cover, designed by moi:

The cover is a collage I made that was inspired by this photo…

… which I snapped on one of the hundreds of bike rides I took during the pandemic.

Two years ago, I wanted to assemble my poems into a book. My poetry teacher, Holly Wren Spaulding, encouraged me to print all my poems and lay them on the bed or on the floor—to take up a wide space and arrange and re-arrange the pages.

I laid them on the ground. They hadn’t felt particularly related while I was writing them. But walking among them, I started to see common threads.

Many of them seemed to touch on the land I live on, here in San Diego, especially the beasty, prickly plants that pop up over and over again, no matter how many suburban landscapers try to get rid of them.

But also, I saw a story poking through those images: a story I wanted to tell about my family that I couldn’t seem to get at in prose.

A story that had something to do with prickly beasties who grew again and again, no matter how many times people who knew better tried to root them out.

( You can hear me read one of the poems here.)

From then on, it became easier to arrange the poems into the book that became A Drop in the Dry Season. (In this Instagram reel I talk about where the title came from.)

If you want to read that story and soak in those images, I hope you’ll consider buying a copy.

If you’d like a copy of A Drop in the Dry Season:

1. Sign up for an annual subscription to Estranged. Everyone who signs up for the $50 annual subscription will receive a chapbook in the mail. (This applies to those of you who are already signed up for a year subscription. Thank you!)

Subscribe here and you’ll get your free copy, plus the knowledge that you’re supporting my ongoing work here at Estranged.

2. OR preorder your copy of A Drop in the Dry Season at this link.

All copies will ship on December 3.

If you don’t or can’t spend money on this right now, consider liking and sharing my work so that other people can find it. Those actions (liking and sharing) help me connect with more people like you: people who both support and benefit from my writing. I’m grateful for our connection and for your support as we build this space to talk about important and difficult and also funny and poignant things.

Maggie

PS: Here’s another poem from the book.