I offer this post as a sort of intention-setting moment, as I believe what I intend to do here is more noteworthy than who I am. I come to this position of writer-in-residence with an interest in engaging more deeply, both with myself and with this place I call home, Racine. I come with the anticipation of writing, as is prescribed in the writer-in-residence title, and in order to do that, I am striving to take on a posture of awareness as I exist within my days.

I am asking these questions in the months and moments ahead, and I invite you to do the same:

What is Racine, and what does this place mean to me?

Who are my neighbors? What are their interests, needs, desires?

And who am I? How do I exist in this moment, and how do I hope to exist in the future?

Poetry has become a tool in my life to tap into awareness. The poetry of others serves as a guide, offers me fresh perspectives, prompts me to consider. Writing my own poetry gives me the chance to observe and respond, to situate, to make a mark of a moment in time—whether that moment is one to come back to or one to simply acknowledge and move on from. For me, I find both support and freedom in this form. I believe that could be true for you too.

For the next six months, I invite you to tag along, and maybe try something new, as I attempt to engage openly with my existence in Racine. Weekly, you’ll find a musing, likely a poem, from me, along with a prompt to help us all take on a posture of awareness toward our outer world and our inner selves.

At the end of it all, I hope to find myself with a fresh batch of poems picking at my experiences and observations of my days lived in Racine, poems that mark these moments of my life. And I hope that there’s a batch of similar observations generated by all of you who are reading this.

If you find yourself writing along with me and wanting to share your work, please send your writings my way via email. Over the coming months, work generated by the community will be compiled into what I imagine being a small anthology aiming to reflect the varied realities of lives lived in Racine.

I do hope you will consider contributing, as we all have poems within us waiting to be written.

Best,
L.A. Sklba
sklblauren@gmail.com