HERE WE GO

Hello, Friends! And welcome back. I know it’s been a minute.

I spent the second half of 2024 focusing solely on stitching together my second poetry collection and my new role as Santa Monica’s Inaugural Poet Laureate and that left me less time to come here to essay and evaluate, to paint and make with color. Now that I know the role and its responsibilities better I am excited to return to my substack and studio practices.

2025 has had a hard start for so many, nothing I need to tell you about here. Turn on the news. As always, on the flip side of these frightening disasters we find altruism, courage, community cooperation and compassionate social action. In a perfect world we wouldn’t need calamity to come for these invaluable virtues to kick in, but this ain’t no Shangri-la. I’ll take it. I love looking at the world when it is working well like this - when people are pitching in and practicing all of their best habits. Community building and creating powerful circles of creative care in every corner that they can. The real world work of rupture and repair. The spring sprout that will inevitably shoot through the ash. We are a ridiculously resilient bunch. We were built to begin again (and again and again). We were born to survive here and rise.

Here we go,

Anne