Final Update: As I embark on my third act (retirement) I have been thinking a lot about my one little word for 2026 (Fixing) and how that word may provide the most guidance of all my words over the years, but I realize that my 2025 choice of Create has continued to play an important role in this season of transition (a semester of reduced teaching followed by retirement). This is especially true as I come out of a very writing intensive June with Sawstone Poets, Lexington Poetry Gauntlet, and of course Lexington Poetry Month (where I posted 30 poems for the first time!). My third act has also included a lot of reading and watching in community as well as writing which has made them more creative than ever before as I think and write about the texts (books, films, and television shows). Check out my third act third space to learn more about the ways I will create. Stay tuned to this blog (or weigh in) as I re-vision this blog.
What’s New? How have I lived up to Create in 2025? I have written with my students and the Rebel Cartographers. I participated in LexPoMo 2025 (scroll back through my posts for each day of participation). And I created an art manifesto offering nine strategies for living a creative life. Currently I am reading all the poems that my friends posted to LexPoMo (because it is impossible to keep up in the moment) and picking my favorites. I am finding that process so meaningful and inspirational that I know I can return to it over and over. I can’t wait to share my art manifesto with my students this fall. What do you want to create? How are you being creative? Update: This week my students have been thinking about the vibes/metaphors of their creative manifestos and today I shared my art manifesto plus another recent mentor text. I cannot wait to see what they manifest! What do you want to manifest in your life and/or the world?
Original: As the Rebel Cartographers embark on our Art Manifestos for 2025, I am focusing on the word Create for 2025 as my one little word. It may also inspire my manifesto but I’m not ready to say just yet. I am pulled in multiple directions still. In the meantime I have been focused on creating the life and world and day and work that I want, but for 2025 I want to be intentional and deliberate about my acts of creation both globally and locally. As I note in my invitation to join the Rebel Cartographers by creating your own art manifesto my original driving force was a response to the election, but I am done with politics and the larger world and instead am embracing Cicero or George Herbert this season with the motto “living well is the best revenge.” I am taking my power back and focusing on creation. I am not withdrawing from the world, but I am not spending my limited time and energy on the news and definitely not on politics. Focusing on creation is also my way of pushing back against the AI-panic pervading the education community. The work in my classroom will be unique, meaningful, and fun and celebrate the creativity that only humans can offer to the world. Last, but certainly not least, focusing on creation is my way of balancing the losses I expect to face in 2025 as well as my deepest fears.
Some of that focus will be completely selfish such as creating life and work routines that support my physical and spiritual health and happiness as well as creating more poetry and other creative projects. But I will also work to create community and connection to protect the vulnerable in my proximity. I cannot save the world or even the United States from its choices, but I can continue to support literacy in Eastern Kentucky, feed the hungry in my community, and offer health care and legal protection for women and transfolk in my state. And as long as I continue to teach I can make my classroom a joyful community of writers where we focus on creation and our humanity. Primarily, my intent is to strive each day to create something, however small and imperfect and transient, that will make my world and life a little better than I found it upon waking.
But my task is not complete as each year since 2022 I have also tried (and failed to limit myself) to select a guiding poem for the year as well as my word. I did a better job of narrowing my initial selections this year with just four poems in contention:
- in our chant of the creation of the world by leilani portillo
- Move by Alicia Ostriker
- Each Year by Dora Malech
- The Seedling by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Of course that may be because I started with a focused list (original source unknown, sorry) of poems considering dawn, creation, and beginnings. I suspect I originally saved the list as an invitation for the Rebel Cartographers but do not know for sure. I am like a squirrel hiding away my caches of poems. Each poem offers something to inspire me to write and think but also may inspire my art manifesto. leilani portillo’s in our chant of the creation of the world reminds me that every new thing we create is steeped in what came before. None of us are original and new even though we are unique. Move by Alicia Ostriker makes me think about the fact that we are all creating the blueprint for our lives. There is one specific line in Each Year by Dora Malech that speaks deeply to me: “You cannot make a keepsake of this season.” Paul Laurence Dunbar’s The Seedling helps me remember that even when life is a lonely struggle all we can do is the best that we can. I also love this reminder that planting seeds is also an act of creation.
In the end, my reflections led me to choose Move and The Seedling as the poems best matched to Create to guide in 2025.
Every day I will strive to create and I will surround myself with a community that shares that priority. That is the energy I want to put into the world in 2025. What one little word will help you make the most of your wild and joyful life this year? What do you want to create this year?
Note: Check out my previous words and poems.
Image by endri yana yana from Pixabay
Deanna, I love the idea of CREATE for 2025. My olw is Joy, but “create” plays a role in that. Creating is where we can find joy, even in tough times. I’m looking forward to finding joy in small places and making my own joy through creativity and those I choose to spend time with. I don’t think 2025 is going to be a great year, so it’s going to take all of us creators to make it a little brighter for those around us. Hopefully I’ll have a blog post up about my Venn diagram of descriptors that I want to use as a guide for me for this year. Also, I’m planning to make it back to the writing group this week, but the best laid plans. . .
No, 2025 is not going to be a good year, but I think going into it with the right approach can help us create joy for us and our communities. At least little pockets of it.
I so appreciate your reflective stance, Deanna, and all that you do throughout the year to nurture and inspire writing (including me).
These lines from the Seedling poem resonate:
“And the sun and showers will help you
Through the lonesome, struggling hours”
Kevin
Thank you and I appreciate the conversations our reflections/writing have had through the years.