#21 Why the Caged Bird Screams
and other things I learned from publishing during a pandemic
In 2019, Jenny and Rose started writing to each other about creativity, sobriety, and relationships. In P.S. Draft in Progress, we’re inviting you to pull up a chair and join our (very human, always AI-free) correspondence.
Whenever Old Miss Bedford came to babysit, she released our pet parakeets in the house. Clouds and Spring Daisy were by no means tame, and they frantically flew for the windows, slamming their tiny heads against the glass. My sister and I would stand there, slack-jawed, knowing we’d have to round them up before our parents got home.
We would slip on dad’s fireplace gloves and, like tiny falconers, attempt to seduce them toward our butterfly nets. One night, Clouds flew up the leg of Old Bedford’s brown, polyester pants. She screamed bloody murder as she slapped at her thigh. Eventually, I wrangled him, pushed his stunned body back into the hanging cage with Spring Daisy, and latched the door shut. The rest of my life has felt like atonement. And by that, I mean, I’ve been very kind to birds.
I loved your recent letter—particularly the sketch of starlings leaning into the wind. Such poignancy to the choreography—defiance even. Mother Earth offers us no shortage of instruction, does she? We simply forget to pay attention. You asked me what I’ve learned from birds. In addition to radical gentleness (thank you, Clouds and Spring Daisy), they’ve taught me to persist.
In 2019, I was invited to partake in a collaborative art show called…drum-roll…Birds. Six women writers paired with six women artists paying homage to our feathered friends. Immediately, I was mesmerized by the work of my partner, artist Emma Greenhill.
Her whimsical portraits of women and birds spoke to her recent breast cancer journey. The women donned headscarves and the birds were perched in ways that implied tenderness and trust. For Emma, birds were those rare loved ones who’d remained by her side through treatment and recovery.
While my own relationship with resilience was forged through sobriety, there were undeniable parallels in our work. In fact, the conversations between my poems and Emma’s paintings felt so fluid, so generative, that we decided to make a book.
Had we known what was to come—a collaboration marked by medical masks, burned bridges, and actual fires—we would have remained in our respective nests, heeding the hum of our small, safe lives.Thank God we didn’t know.
When creative differences forced us to part ways with our once trusted publisher (a devastating loss both personally and professionally), we persisted. When our marketing events were cancelled due to Covid and our fundraising journal sales shifted online, we powered on. We’re making something that matters, we repeated to ourselves again and again.
And we’d come too far to walk away. We’d whittled our monumental efforts down to 40 poems and 40 paintings, and they insisted we see this through. Yes—our creative pairings spoke to us, and it’s a good thing they did, because things got even harder.
To preserve the integrity of Emma’s original artwork, we opted to use a local, traditional printing press. We witnessed our poems and paintings etched into hot metal plates. The smell of drying ink rose up from the machines as our efforts spilled onto the output trays in real time. Like witnessing childbirth, it reduced us both to tears.
Days later, we met at the press to sign hundreds of pre-ordered copies. Boxes of our books were stacked in the conference room, and finally, we could hold two years of hard work in our hands. I noted a look on Emma’s face as she flipped through a copy. The color felt off on some of the paintings and pages had been cropped in ways that gave pause. We quieted our misgivings and pushed forward—the deadline to mail the books was fast approaching.
The day after we’d shipped our pre-orders, Emma called, her British voice quavering as she said, The pages are falling out of the copies I brought home. In disbelief, I ran into my room and grabbed the box of books from my bedside. As Emma had instructed, I pressed the book open fully and the pages fanned out of their binding and onto the floor. Heart racing, I went through the entire stack, and the pages fell out of every single one.
The image of our pre-ordered books making their way through the postal service to our unassuming supporters destroyed me. A deep animal sob forced its way out of my throat and my body folded in two. I’ve logged my fair-share of public humiliations but this—this felt like the crown jewel.
The press went into overdrive to remedy the error—a curious case of defective binding glue. And apparently, in their hasty efforts to reprint 1000 copies of our book, their machine caught on fire. The destruction was vast and the printer uttered a sentence no one wants to hear: This has never happened before.
As Emma and I batted away thoughts of conspiracy theories and curses, we finally received the green-light. At our insistence, we stood in the back of the industrial press and hand-inspected every single book.
Round two of the pre-orders (featuring corrected colors, cropping, and glue!) were shipped with a vague apology from the printer, and our supporters graciously welcomed their more durable copies. Covid restrictions had slowly lifted and the subsequent months were marked by a beautiful launch party, bookstore and art fair events, and valiant marketing efforts.
We’d arrived on this journey with one certainty in tow—we could do hard things. Despite countless parakeet-up-the-pant moments, we sold a lot of books and received generous feedback from readers. We submitted our (fully intact) collection to a contest and received a Gold Nautilus Book Award, the judges oblivious to the shit-storm we’d endured.
The irony didn’t escape us. In creating a collection about the resilience of women, we were almost pushed to our breaking point.
Almost.
P.S. Was there a moment that folded you in two, Rose? How did you move through it?
P.P.S. T gave our hermit crab terrarium a major glow up with his 3-D prints and we welcomed our newest residents, Captain and Maria Von Crab. Auf Wiedersehen, crappy old tank!
BONUS TRACK! Listen to today’s audio version at the top of the post and hear a poem from But Still, She Flies. Interested in a signed copy? Message me on my website for payment/shipment details!