Seventeen degrees this morning, and yesterday's wind was biting. Yet tulips, crocuses, daffodils are spiking through the frosted leaves of my front garden. Sorrel and garlic are stirring, and shrubs are stretching fingers of new twigs. We still have snow piles and ice slicks, but the ground has softened and, where the sunlight strikes them, patches of grass are beginning to green.

Compared to Harmony, spring comes early in Portland. I always hated March up north: I longed for spring and all I got was snowstorms. Now spring arrives before I'm even ready for it. We may get a snowstorm here too, but it will melt away quickly. The sea winds have shifted; the sun glows with new power. My sap is running and I'm itching to dig.

Not yet, however. Yesterday I picked up sticks and studied the terrain, but the wind is too sharp to start peeling away mulch. Later this week, when temperatures rise, I'll consider pruning the rose bushes. Today I have to stick to housework.

I'll be on the road tomorrow, teaching in southern Maine, and then I'll fall back into a week of editing. The work is piling up, and now weekend classes and presentations are looming as well. In spring, an organization's mind turns to thoughts of poetry workshops. . . .

At least I'm not going to AWP this week. But a friend of mine, another Maine poet, is leading a session in support of writers who work outside the academy. She's asked a number of us to comment on what that's like. Here's what I told her:

Advantages of being outside the academy. I don’t have an MFA, but I do have eight books of prose and poetry, all with standard royalty contracts. In other words, working and living outside the academy has, in many ways, given me considerable freedom in terms of both reading and writing autonomy and the richness of material that arises from my daily life. For more than two decades I homesteaded in the rural north country of Maine. I did not know any poets who lived within an hour’s drive of my house. So I had to become self-sufficient in the craft, and that turned out to be an accidental gift: I learned to trust my eyes and my ears, my observations; I read voraciously and deeply. Being alone transformed me into a poet. 

Disadvantages of being outside the academy. I earn almost no money. I have been extremely isolated. I find I cannot apply for fellowships, grants, or residencies because I don’t have any famous friends who will write letters of recommendation for me. Without an MFA I cannot hope for even a community-college adjunct job, though I’m an accomplished and experienced teacher of poetry. I haven’t been able to spend money on getting an MFA because I’ve been putting my two children through college and our family is just barely surviving on my husband’s carpentry earnings. I cannot afford to pay my way to AWP. Twice, in the past, my publisher hired me to work at the AWP bookfair, but I was so shy among strangers that I was afraid to attend any sessions in case people figured out how much of a nobody I was. Though I have published many books, they are rarely reviewed because I have no network of colleagues or mentors. Shyness feeds shyness. Of course I assume that no one knows who I am, so I tend to retreat inside myself and keep it that way.

These comments make the situation seem more black-and-white than it is. I have found ways to teach, but the work is irregular and often feels like guerrilla warfare: drop out of a tree, throw some poems around, vanish. My position at the Frost Place is a miracle: on paper, I would not seem to be the top candidate for the job, but the stars aligned and I try to stay worthy of them. Likewise, the opportunity at Monson Arts: for once, my skill set (knows how to talk to kids from the sticks) fits the job description.

Nor do I repine about my outside-the-academy status . . . at least I repine far less than I once did. To be honest, I hate clubby situations such as AWP that ramp up my anxiety and my imposter syndrome. I'm tense about excessive traveling and talking to strangers; I hate competing for status; I don't want to teach five sections of Comp. I wouldn't mind some book reviews. I wouldn't mind being treated like an equal. But I've dug my own hole, and it's turned into a rambling burrow, and you're welcome to dive down and curl up by my fire if you're out there in the wild wood, lost and hungry and with the weasels and stoats on your tail.