My father helped me to reexamine my chapbook, Ohio Lonely

I didn’t get to see my father on Father’s Day since Don and I stayed in Michigan. we did get to visit Don’s father, a man I am excited about getting to know in our little visits just into Indiana.

Until this morning, me trying to awake after a night of deep but terrified sleep, I realized that my neglected chapbook project (poetry and visual art genealogy), Ohio Lonely should return to me. My father helped me to realize this, giving me a poem in a few little phrases over the telephone last night … his burying 2 dead squirrels in our yard as if they were public figures peppering the news.

I felt a great depression, that great loss, after completing The Chase even as I felt a great release in releasing these poems into the world, poems that would never see the light of day had you asked me even six months ago. My heart had been devoured, my confidence wittled away the lock to my cage, everything escaping and almost killing me till I let them loose into the world. Such emotion  shouldn’t be kept in a journal under a mattress.

And so with this newfound passion .. I am completing and then releasing Ohio Lonely.

Visit http://www.carriemcgath.com to stay posted on this and all other news about my work.

On the Move to Chicago … and for art school at The Art School of art schools.

The last several nights, my dreams have been ransacked by what I assume is this worried-excitement I am feeling now … about what will be My New Life. My tarot card reading on Friday revealed my need to pull my head a bit more out of the clouds thus making this art school dream truly the reality it is … but these dreams. There are always the dreams.

As a teenager, mainly the years surrounding the death of my aunt Shirley and my subsequent Bipolar diagnosis, my dreams were terrifying. Like night terrors in children, I would have them as a teenager thus telling myself I could tell no one of these things, these dreams, especially the parts about being touched and screamed at by “the monsters”. These monsters were, and still are, the things that are monstrous that moment to me. Last night, bats again, terrorizing my every moment, seeing myself finding pieces of them everywhere, waking up to jump up terrified believing a bat’s head was truly resting on my chest. And more and more. Each night, it is something else, the only thing seeming to tame them being the nights I am staying with Don. That safety. “That nothing bad could possibly happen when he is here” feeling. Don (love) and Art (also, love).

Is this all about my new life? It is all a test of this new woman inside of me … watching the old me die again (whomever she was.) And the new one moving, moving in, moving to Chicago to fulfill a long dream that has always tempered my terrors — the taste of art, the feel and being of it.

Living in an alive city without my hangups (as Kalamazoo has in droves).

Attending a premiere art school where I will learn my new self, learn to channel my unbattered love for art as a way of life always. My little bedfellow next to the love of my life. The art of possibility, randomness, and chance … waiting in the wings always like courage.

Debut of My New Chapbook @ FIRE, June 5 @ 9:00p

The debut reading of Carrie McGath’s chapbook, The Chase: Friday, June 5th, 2009 at FIRE Gallery in Kalamazoo, Michigan (1249 Portage Rd.). Doors open at 8:00, Open Mic at 8:30, and Carrie’s feature reading at 9:00p.

For more info, please visit:

http://www.carriemcgath.com

http://www.thisisfire.com

$5 at the door.

Carrie’s merch:

The Chase for $10 special debut price with one copy awarded as a door prize.

Carrie’s other books also available.