I'm Amanda.
These days, my main preoccupation is enjoying my time in the world for as long as possible, while living with stage IV lung cancer. On the side, I write; usually poetry, sometimes other things.
I was born in the Midwestern USA, and since then have managed to find time for two unforeseen international moves. The first was to Belgium and the second to the Czech Republic, where I'm now living in Prague with my wife and a larger books-to-area ratio than any one person should admit to—or even any two people. I've spent the majority of my life grieving with far too much fluency and living places where the languages are ones where I have far too little.
You'd think I would have learned after that first time, but no.
My writing comes mostly from an intersection of love and grief, things that far too often find each other. It bears the weight of my son—who passed away at age seven—and the split of a marriage that couldn't bear his absence. It speaks from a body moulded by disease and displacement. My poetry is often laced through with Jewish study, a fragmented ancestry, and the longing for things that always seem just beyond my reach, meticulously dis-remembered.
When I'm not writing, I'm often reading. I’m often listening to my wife recommend something new book that will absolutely wreck me, while I pretend I’m not adding it to my list.
These poems help me, through the writing of them. I'll count it a blessing if they help anyone else.