Goals for 2026 (And a check in on the past)

So, the news is out! I’m the current poet laureate of a city called Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love, sisterly affection, and I would say sibling devotion and care.

I am dreaming into a lot of upcoming programming and taking some time for a few months to build the partnerships, considering regular series and connection, and draw on the vast knowledge resources

Although February is nearly done, I thought I’d check in (finally) on my goals for 2025 and share some of my goals for 2026. I don’t share all of what I’m working on.

So in 2025, I was supposed to Complete the Acentos anthology, Complete edits for a collection of elena minor’s work, Research for the book on Aunt Doris (Doris Rheubottom-Hackley), Consult for Black Lawrence Press (looking like Hybrid texts in March and Poetry in September), Complete a Taino language course/learn basic language, Read PR history and contemporary texts, Do PR family ancestral history reclamation work, Complete my werewolf romance and get agent representation, See Wild Indigo develop into a quarterly workshop series, Grow the Esperimento Sul Respiro residency, Personally travel to Puerto Rico, Peru, Italy, South Carolina, Maine, Arizona, and either Kenya or Colombia this year, Building in times for rest and just dreaming and stillness.

I didn’t get it all done, certainly, but the majority of it, now that I look at is, was completed. For years, I also did a vision board for my year, modeled after the practices of folks like alexis pauline gumbs and Jasminne Mendez. For 2025, it was BUSY, so I actually didn’t get around to it until around October, where I chose images that celebrated in advance the strength of my relationship with my husband and the care we show our babies, my submission to various fellowships and opportunities, my continued research, returning to a more full-time university role, and more. Of the 25+ goals in my visionboard for the tail end of 2025 through 2026, 14 of them have already happened.

Visioning is POWERFUL!

So what are you envisioning for yourself? What are your tenderest dreams that you hesitate to even write down or whisper to yourself? Being selected by community to be poet laureate, to be seen as someone who could give to the city and its people, I can’t say enough about how honored and awestruck and committed I am. I wrote down this dream on my vision board in the tiniest font, daring to dream … and here we are. So claim your tenderness, beloveds. Even if it is a furtive, sheepish offering forward, write it, draw it, speak it into the air. What is for you, is for you.