📚 4/31 TO THE BONE by Angela Narciso Torres. Excerpt from “Self-portrait as Water”: “most forgiving of/substances, I resolve/to live like you—to fill/and be filled,/to take the shape/of my vessel/dispensing heat/displacing matter/lighter than air" #TheSealeyChallenge

Currently reading: ‘Making It’ as a Contract Researcher: A Pragmatic Look at Precarious Work by Nerida Spina, Jess Harris, Simon Bailey, Mhorag Goff 📚

Finished reading: Electric Arches by Eve L. Ewing 📚

📚 3/31 ELECTRIC ARCHES by Eve L. Ewing. Excerpt from “to the notebook kid”: “it’s that flows and flows and flows/and lines like that rip-roaring/bits you got/bars til the end of time/you could rap like/helium bout to spring” ♥️ this collection, so joyful #TheSealeyChallenge

Finished reading: Not Here by Hieu Minh Nguyen 📚

📚 2/31 NOT HERE by Hieu Minh Nguyen. Excerpt from “Heavy”: “There are days when I give up on my body/but not the world.” #TheSealeyChallenge

Finished reading: Unaccompanied by Javier Zamora 📚

📚 1/31 UNACCOMPANIED by Javier Zamora. Excerpt from “Then, It Was So”: “…Cariño,/it was so quiet when I started/counting the days/I wasn’t woken by him.” #TheSealeyChallenge

I’ve been looking for ways to read more books and talk to more people about them, so when the Book Riot piece, Will You Join The Sealey Challenge? came across my radar, it made sense to answer YES.

During the month of August, participants read a poetry chapbook or full-length collection a day for 31 days while sharing their reads on social media using the hashtag #TheSealeyChallenge, named after poet Nicole Sealey and coined by Dante Micheaux during its first year.

Here are several links where you can learn more about the challenge and find suggestions of what to read:

• Nicole Sealey: Why I Read a Poetry Book Every Day For a Month (Bookmarks)
• The Sealey Challenge: An Expansive Way of Reading Poetry (Lithub)
• 31 Poets Recommend 31 Poetry Books to Read Every Day in August (Electric Literature)
• Every Poem Is a Love Poem to Something: An Interview with Nicole Sealey (The Paris Review)
• On the value of reading poetry together—and apart—in the current moment. (Lithub)

I myself will be reading a combination of library ebooks selected from recommendations linked in the Book Riot piece, e-chaps from Sundress Publications, and whatever I’ve got lying around the house. So you can expect that in addition to modern new-to-me poets, there will be some children’s collections of e. e. cummings and Emily Dickinson, one day of Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, and maybe even a YA verse novel or two.

Let me know if you decide to join in!

Want to read: Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer 📚