Is there writing after children? Of course there is. Even if the circumstances of your life have changed, the call to write has not. But how can you manage to cultivate and access your own voice when the voices of your children are so demanding and full of their due need? We’ll spend our time together writing, rethinking our enterprise in the context of parenthood, and strategizing how to negotiate the space between being a parent who wants to write and being a writer who has children.
Spoleto Oh god of little sorrows, do not wait for me at the gate. Here, even in the fugitive hours before dawn when I am most prone to greet you, for tonight, at least, do not wait. The one I love is sleeping quietly, and the frenzied bats have flown again to hang upside down in the dark. The light from outside is casting a bluish sheen on the street. God of little sorrows, I cannot wait any more for joy, will not keep it waiting like a good child patient for its meager turn. Now you must wait. When I am able to sleep again, you sleep, too. How can you not be tired? How can you not want to rest? – Melanie Braverman
Melanie Braverman is the author of the novel East Justice (Permanent Press, 1996), and a collection of poems, Red (Perugia Press, 2002). She teaches Creative Writing at Brandeis University and lives year-round in Provincetown with her partner and their two small children.