A Review of the First Writing Residency

Way back in the beginning, an offer: a room, seventeen square meters, for one poet at a time to write. Paris, Left Bank, rue de Rennes. For three months, mine. Snow on the one small windowsill. A view over buildings, grey and achingingly old. Sudden unexpected friendship, a kite string I latched onto, some sense plugged into my spirit that this was home. Within four years, it would be. A room like a portal, next chapter of a life, mine. How anyone is that. How movement slides through your plans, takes you. I didn’t know how it felt to be an expat, now I do. Didn’t know the extent of beauty, now I do. Halfway through a life, turn left. Home like a mystery, just hanging there. To find it, you simply begin. You simply refuse to decline an invitation to change.