I think we can all agree it has been an objectively not-great year. Yet, I have been so fortunate and if anything, this year has only highlighted how lucky I am. Lucky to be young and healthy, lucky to have a support system, lucky to have some semblance of financial stability.

This year is also the year I’ll remember as being the year I first got published. Not including articles I was assigned to write for blogs or magazines, for the first time, my creative writing was published by someone other than me.

Maybe about thirteen or so months ago now, when I still had enough optimism to submit my poetry to places here and there, I came across a call for local poetry that went as follows:

Sheri-D Wilson, Poet Laureate of Calgary, is sending out a call out to the community, the entire city and the world —

I invite you, to write a portrait

in the form of a poem, prose poem, or snapshot/ flash fiction —

about someone you know (not about yourself)

that lives and works in Calgary.

This project will be curated by a jury of professional writers. Award-winning Calgary publisher, Frontenac House will publish as anthology of the successful juried works. Any writing not chosen for the hard-copy anthology will be published online. If your poem is selected to be part of the YYC POP: Portraits of People, you may be invited to read your work at one of many book launches/ galas in April 2020.

http://www.griffinpoetryprize.com/event/yyc-pop-portraits-of-people-submission-deadline/

And wouldn’t you know it, I had just written a poem that fit. So I submitted it and a few months later found out it had been chosen, not to be published in the book, but to be in the online gallery, which was good enough for me!

It was supposed to happen in April, but then March happened and it got delayed a few times. I think it may have happened in October, but to be honest I’m not sure. I only found out when I was talking about googling people with someone, and out of curiosity googled myself and saw it there in the results.

So, I’m finishing off the year as a published writer! It’s been so long that my blurb is out of date now. I don’t live with my family anymore and unfortunately Foxy died in October. I don’t know how the word “large” got in there, I don’t think I’ve ever thought of my family as “large”.

Anyway, I’m babbling now. You can read the published poem here:

Ivy Miller

Feature Photo by Ruslan Bardash on Unsplash