Required Academic Writing

Required Academic Writing plagues me these days, gives new meaning to the phrase "rubs me raw". Never ending papers it seems. Three this week alone, not including reading and research. Though I am quite proficient at writing academic papers (literary analysis and analysis of the writing craft, as well as research reports mostly this semester), I much prefer creative writing. I am not much for the rules and imposed structure of academic writing. A rebel with a bit of a stubborn streak I suppose...

So, when I am inexplicably away, it is because I have been sucked into the vortex, chained down, deep in the mire of academic writing. Hopefully a year to a year and a half from now I will have my degree in hand entitling me to freedom from academia for a little while. I hope for now whoever may be following my adventures in writers land will stick with me.

In the absence of new material, a poem inspired by Jane Kenyon's poem "The Shirt":

The Tree

The tree stands tall

and its limbs reach out in every direction

soaking in the sun to feed its core

deep in its trunk that sinks below the surface where

roots splay out in every direction clinging to the

dirt, seeking water, staying alive.

Greedy tree.