The Weeds Grow Anyway Release Show Ticket Sales are Open!

Space is limited - reserve your spot today!

You can now reserve your free tickets to the Weeds Grow Anyway release show, which will be on June 27th at 6:30pm, at GOCA’s Marie Walsh Sharpe gallery at the Ent Center for the Arts!

In case you missed my last update, the insides of the book have been printed and book binding has been well underway. As of today, I’ve stitched approximately 200 of the 250 limited first edition books bound. Next steps will include trimming the books to size and adding the wrap-around covers.

There is still time to pre-order a copy of your own, which you can then pick up at the show!

I’m also starting to compile my notes from this process into a guide. Whether this will be a zine, a presentation, a webpage, a class, or all of the above remains to be seen, but it is meant to capture the experience of putting this book together and all the steps involved — compiling and editing the poems, formatting, printing, binding, and beyond — for other writers who want to take a similar approach to publication. It’s meant to share each step, the resources needed, and the lessons learned from both my successes and mistakes.

I initially planned to document the process of making this book while I was in the midst of it, but I’ve come to find that my modes of “doing” and “sharing” seldom like to operate at the same time. I think it’s because the process of “doing” feels fraught and frightening to share when it’s difficult and my shame is at the forefront, and when the “doing” is good, I get a sort of tunnel vision that makes it hard to do anything else. I also feel this weird superstition, like if I look too hard at the how of what I’m doing, which feels a bit necessary for sharing it externally, then I’ll lose my rhythm. It’s a bit like archery — when I think too hard about aiming my arrow from looking at the tip of it relative to the target, my aim gets worse. I’ve found that I have more success the less I think, both in art and archery. My initial impulse is that my thinking could be the enemy of my doing, but I think that’s not quite it. I think it’s moreso that the time for doing is not always the time for thinking.

Or something like that. I’m thinking about it too much, and I’d like to get back to the doing now.

Don’t forget to get your tickets! :)