"We need the poetry of now."
Staying rooted in reality so we can creatively respond.
New prints and cards in my shop, like this one devoted to quiet, creative mornings and this one as a forever reminder. // Winter 2026 session of DIVE Writing Group. starts next week! Join Kerri Anne for a season of writing—choose between the Tuesday and Thursday cohort.
Hello friends,
I’m trying to hold on to Fallow January as much as I can this month, but it’s proving harder this year than in others. For one, I’m deep in my book project. The mental space required to write a long-form book is so entirely different from the pace the news cycle and the digital world sprints at. My brain constantly feels a kind of whiplash going back and forth in between the two.
I probably don’t need to tell you what the second one is. The extremism, authoritarianism, fascism, and absolute inhumanity currently on display is all encompassing.
One option of course would be to disengage entirely. Turns out, not an option. This current moment is not asking for disengagement. This is not the time to look away. It is the time to pay attention, to do more than we have done before. We are in an all-hands-on-deck moment.
As Albert Camus writes in Create Dangerously, “artists faced by their times can neither turn away from nor become lost in them.”
The other option—the only option—is to figure out how to pay attention and acknowledge the realities of the moment without letting our creative spirit be squashed along the way. We pay attention so that we can decide what we do with what we’ve learned.
At a Federal Oversight & Accountability Town Hall hosted by Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield’s office1 this past week, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison had a specific call out to artists:
“We need the poetry of now. We need the songs of now. We need the rap music of now. We need the symphonic orchestra of now. We need the powerful aesthetic that can do something that no politician can do, and that is to inspire people.”
In my sketchbook yesterday, I made a list: Things I Saw This Week That Weren’t On a Screen. Here were a few items:
Lichen on a fern.
A group of women connected by cold water.
Stars and Jupiter.
A child folding a salal leaf into a paper plane.
A coral mushroom.
Shadows of forsythia branches on a wall.
Protest signs and posters in windows.
Creative friends.
We see a lot on screens, we consume a lot on screens. We also learn, investigate, get a front row seat to what is happening outside of our immediate world. At its best—if we wield our attention with care—a screen can help to provide a larger context, give us a view we wouldn’t have had before.
But a screen only holds so much, and when we’re not careful, it quickly leads to the kind of overwhelm and stagnation that Camus cautioned about. Cultivating a practice of attention means directing that attention both near and the far. Not letting it be scattered, manipulated by the companies and platforms who so badly want to hold it there, keep us from doing the work on the ground, the connection building, the creative imagining that an alternative path requires.
At the end of a long and depressing conversation the other night—fascism! billionaires! AI! breakdown of social norms!—a good friend asked me, “ok, what’s one thing that makes you hopeful right now?”
It took me a second, because I was stuck in my negative spiral. But then once I started, there was clearly so much more than one thing. Mostly it came down to people: all of the people taking action in any way they can. The connections, the solidarity. And the artists, always the artists.
Make yourself a list this weekend. All the things you saw that were not on the screen. The friends, the stars, the forest, the sea, the tiny, everyday social interactions that make up a web of living, breathing humans trying to navigate this world together.
-Anna
ANALOG INSPIRATION
One of my commitments this year for my own work is more analog projects. Physically making things is always good for us, but in this digital era it’s really starting to feel more and more radical.
So I figured I would share a little analog inspiration this week: playing with shapes!
The idea is simple.
Cut a bunch of shapes out of paper (bonus points for paper you have scribbled/painted on).
Spend time arranging them.
Glue them down if you feel so inclined.
That’s all. Far better than doom-scrolling, I assure you. You can block out 15 minutes, call your reps, and then get ten minutes of analog art in.
The 100 Day Project starts on February 22! As many of you know, I start every year and never finish. Who cares! I’ve been scheming on what I am going to try to do this year and already looking forward to it. Sign up for the #The100DayProject Newsletter for more inspiration.
Dorothy Waugh, the woman who created the first National Park Posters.
Creative work as everything done “between the panics.” Oh yes, I know this feeling.
“…be a part of a chain of creation, in opposition to destruction".” - Freya Rohn (who started knitting the red resistance hat I linked to last week)
Make a correspondence kit! These are so cool and I am putting this on February list of projects. Thank you for inspiration Rose Pearlman and Erin Boyle.
“Nostalgia is not a strategy.” - Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada
Thank you for this. I didn’t have red wool in my stash, so had to order some (bonus points for it being Norwegian wool?). It’s very cold here in northern Virginia; the temperature this morning on my walk was between -7F and -3F with windchill. It was glorious! I’ve been walking through Morven Park and observing nature. I’ll start recording my observations in my sketch book.
Please continue to remind me and all of us of that Camus book!! I must read it as soon as there’s some brain space!