Writing that is strongly situated in its setting has always appealed to me, as a place-based writer.  So when I saw the call for submissions for “landscapes” from all the sins, I had a lot of fun looking through my ‘ready for sending’ folder and hit ‘submit’ faster than the Flash on a sugar rush. To my great glee, one of my personal favorite poems also caught the editors’ eyes, and is now published in Issue 5 of all the sins: contemporary landscapes.

Guillaume Vogels, De vijver in de winter, 1885, oil on canvas. Currently owned by Stedelijke Musea Sint-Niklaas, used with creative commons permission.

You can jump directly to my poem here: “Belgian Skylight.”

I wrote “Belgian Skylight” when I was living abroad, teaching kindergarten in Brussels. It was a phenomenal year in which I learned a lot and traveled a lot and spent a lot of time watching the light change out my window in my garret bedroom at the top of the house I shared with two other teachers. There’s a kind of light in a Brussels winter that was especially conducive to writing, probably because it was the kind of blank white that was reminiscent of a page waiting for words, both promising and melancholy. As we head into the cold season (finally!) here in New England, it’s lovely timing for this piece to come to life.

I highly recommend the whole of issue 5; there are some gorgeous pieces of art within, both visual and literary, so do go check it out!