a little feral

“ I want this holiness, and my god, I hope this isn’t selfish, but I want it without believing.”

Not everyone has a god anymore. That’s how I begin to answer the question I’ve been asked many times this month: “What’s your book about?”

I don’t say: there’s a candle in my chest, and when the doctor’s office plays Oceans by Hillsong, my sweater ignites. I don’t say I’ve seen demons in hot yoga, silhouettes against the ceiling, dark and evil, preying on my downfall. I don’t say: I need a god now more than ever. I don’t say: I want this holiness, and my god, I hope this isn’t selfish, but I want it without believing.

The poems in A Little Feral, my poetry collection coming out in May of next year (eek!), explore the reaching and aching towards something holy, even at the risk of not accurately naming it. Even at the risk of coming away more tangled than tamed. Because poetry, in my opinion, is less concerned with fixing and more with finding.

god as gall. god as grit. god as glitter. god as ghost.

The liminal space between faith and fear is dangerous to occupy. Few do it unapologetically. I’ve recently discovered Brittany Lowe Hartley on Tik Tok, and she describes herself as a spiritual atheist. In a recent interview on The Mortal Atheist, she says:

“Spirituality used to be a list of shoulds… I should do this, I should do that. And now it’s more, am I awake right now? Can I be awake while I wash the dishes?”

To be awake is to be a little feral. Feral defined as “in a wild state, especially after escape from captivity.”

When Hartley talks about spirituality being less about shoulds and more about being awake, I recognize that in the pulse of my poems. When I wrote A Little Feral, I found myself finishing stanzas with a toothbrush in my mouth, writing lines during ungodly hours, which, for someone who is usually in bed by 8, is strange. From afar, whilst editing the final manuscript, I probably looked akin to a wild raccoon. (A cute one, though, ofc.)

I wrote the majority of these poems after leaving a conservative Mennonite fundamentalist religion (if you scroll back far enough in my archive here, you can find a picture of me in a cute little Mennonite dress) and spending the next five years figuring out whatthehellisgoingon.

I was quite literally a little feral as I wrote these poems.

In Hartley’s book “No Nonsense Spirituality,” she encourages folks who have deconverted to create new traditions to replace the old ones. Contemporary “prayers” before eating. Altars for the seasons. Small weekly rituals to slow down and connect with the sacred. Poetry.

We must cling to everything holy we can find, even in godless places, I’m discovering.

If to be awake is to be a little feral, then this book of poems is my glitter, my gall, my grit, my god.

Love,

Maria

The title of this collection comes from my poem published in ONLY POEMS earlier this year:

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