I Accidentally Wrote a Poetry Collection

Last December, I signed up for a chapbook writing challenge.

It was organized by The Page Gallery Journal, and the idea was to create a poetry manuscript in the shape of a house, with each section representing a different room.

I thought it was an interesting concept. Houses are funny things. We live in them, grow up in them, move from one into another, create memories and sometimes spend years trying to forget what happened inside them. They keep all sorts of things that never make it into our family photo albums.

I started writing immediately because I know myself and if I set a project aside for later, there's a good chance that later will never come.

But then, the writing prompts disappeared.

There was a mistake in the prompts, and they were no longer available. I could have given up, but I already invested a lot of time and energy in the challenge. I decided to make up my own prompts for the missing ones.

Eventually, my little house had all its rooms.

Though, the poems weren't all written in December, as the challenge originally required. They weren't even written in the same place. Some came from old notebooks and drafts I revisited, while others were written in different homes, different countries and different periods of my life. Some were born in the forest while I was working.

Some are about childhood and family. Others about old relationships, grief, womanhood, the things we hide under our beds, and strange little objects that end up carrying our entire lives inside them.

There’s even a recipe for miserable Mondays.

When I had enough material for a chapbook, I started thinking about publishing it.

I looked into my options, but the versions of the book I was being offered weren’t what I had in mind. Their idea seemed to be a traditional poetry book with white pages, black text, one poem after another. Just like every other.

I wanted my book to feel a little like walking through an actual house. I wanted small illustrations, visual details, little things that would make the experience of turning the pages feel connected to the poems.

I didn't want to give that up just because I didn't know how to do it on my own.

So I decided to go for it anyway and designed the entire chapbook myself. Well, okay, with Canva.

I had to figure out about formatting, layouts, the illustrations and all the other things that came with it. There were moments when I seriously questioned my decision.

But I got there.

And, most importantly, the finished book looks much closer to the one I imagined for myself.

It’s called A House At Year’s End (after the name of the original challenge).

It’s a short(ish) poetry collection arranged as rooms of a house, with twenty-five poems about life, memories and all the things we leave behind: a grandmother’s hands, a coat by the door, a couch carried out, a shoebox under the bed, and our past selves.

I think the whole thing turned out to be quite symbolic. It started with a set of instructions that got lost along the way, and eventually became something I had to figure out for myself. Just like life, growing up and everything else in between. Just like the poems in this collection.

A House at Year's End is available on Amazon:

I'd be super grateful if you could give it a read. ❤️ And if you do, I'd love to know which room was your favorite.

Thank you for being here and following my writing. It's a strange and exciting (and a little scary) feeling to send a book out into the world and know that it might end up in someone else's home.

See you somewhere between the pages,

Imola