Living and Loving Fatly

Tonight I will be looking over/proofreading the PDF of Fat Poets Speak (2): Living and Loving Fatly. From there, it will mostly be in the supremely capable hands and mind of Peggy Elam, CEO of Pearlsong Press.

We voted on the name for the second volume of Fat Poets Speak. There was one other possible choice, but "Living and Loving Fatly" seemed to fit beautifully. We live each day as people who could be any size, and yet at the same time we live as fat people, which is quite different than living as people who are "average," whatever that means, or "slim." The difference is that we win victories and display courage by choosing when to respond to the anti-fat bigotry of those who harass and stigmatize us, and when to pass these people by. Or laugh at them. Or look at them as if they are crazy.

Sometimes, as one of our FPS poets, Eileen Rosensteel, writes so eloquently in her poem "Minefields," our days are indeed minefields:  we skirt anger and pick our way through situations which could and sometimes do explode into confrontations. We ignore angry glances, we determinedly put items in our shopping carts that we wish to buy even if we incur the incredulity of the busybodies and the ignorant.

Other times we encounter bliss as we exchange ideas and thoughts and yes, love, with those close to us who support and succor us.

Up and down, down and up again - we are witnesses to the aches, difficulties and sometimes horrors of living in a culture that still devalues us for our bodies and shapes, and also to the pleasures of knowing and appreciating people who appreciate us in our own skin.

It is not easy at times to live and love fatly. But it is often interesting and definitely poem-worthy.

We hope you will agree when you read Fat Poets Speak (2): Living and Loving Fatly, due to be published in April, 2014.