One of the first poems I ever published had a glacier in it. I was eighteen. I’d never been to Alaska. I had a photograph clipped from a magazine and the kind of instinct you don’t question when you’re young and writing what’s true to you before anyone else tells you what truth is supposed to sound like.
Years later, one of my clients brought me a project that included writing about glaciers. Her glaciers were real locations, field notes, history, and erosion, they too were a poem in a different way. What struck me was not just the subject matter, but the strange and quiet echo across time—how something I’d written before I had any real knowledge of glaciers found its way back to me through the lens of another writer's project. I didn’t plan for that. It’s one of those things that happens when you stay in this work long enough. Art has a way of circling back.
Her book is the kind you keep near your desk because it continues to offer material. The names of places carry weight and sound like they belong inside poems. You can begin to notice the way history can pull a scene to a page, or how a single paragraph can challenge the way you’ve been describing land or people or memory. It’s nonfiction, but it is built with an artist’s attention. I’ll include a link to an article about the book here:
When we look at a book like this with the intent to be inspired for our own work, we begin to see that the right text or image at the right time can carry our work forward without force. This is how glaciers move, or used to move, before so many of them began to vanish. They shaped what was around them without spectacle or speed, and even now, as they disappear, they leave behind something worth studying. A book like this can do the same. It reminds you to write while the source material is still here, and to work with the urgency of someone who understands that nothing—place, voice, memory, weather—can be counted on to wait.
Let’s try something.
I’m going to give you two photographs. Look at each one. Sit with them.
Can you write a paragraph, or a scene, or even a single poetic sentence that attempts to capture the tone, texture, or story in the image that holds your attention?
This is how I wrote a novella once. I saw a picture in The Sun Magazine. One photograph—just one—was the thing that opened it. The image came first, and every character, every scene, every choice, all of it kept returning to that initial spark. I found other photographs along the way that helped me stay inside the atmosphere of the book, but the engine was always that one image. Not intending to be a prompt, but still a door.
So here we are. You, me, two photographs, a memory, and maybe something new getting ready to form at the edges of your attention. Maybe one of those images up there leads somewhere. Or maybe you’re already walking the road, and this is your glacier.
I said I would never do this, but I'm doing it.
There’s now a paid version of this newsletter. The free version isn’t going anywhere, it’ll just arrive a little less often.
Paid subscribers will get more frequent letters with the same focus on the writing life and the business side of getting your work into the world.
You’ll also get a regular section of open submissions—journals, presses, contests, and agents I’ve already researched and stand behind. You won’t need to spend your time sorting through outdated listings or wondering who’s legitimate or who’s just in it for the money. That part’s already handled, so you can focus on sending out your work.
The paid version is $5 a month or $40 for a year, and if you sign up now, you’ll get an extra 25% off.
If you value the time and care that goes into these letters, joining as a paid subscriber is the best way to keep receiving the writing insights and publishing guidance you rely on—plus curated submission leads that save you hours.
Hope to see you over there.
"Libby James is thorough, insightful, and timely. I appreciate her help immensely!" -
Naomi Klouda
