We have arrived at the end of this year’s NPM series on my blog. Thank you so much to all of you for joining me on this exploration and celebration of a few of the different ways poetry enriches our lives.

For my last post in this 2016 series, I’ve decided to share some images with you of how I spent my afternoon. I love making art, beautiful things made by hand. I used to make jewelry, which went rather well until I became a novelist and (between that and the two kids and the full-time teaching job with an hour-long commute each way) no longer had time to spend on it. When I was a kid, I loved to draw, and I did it often, even though I had absolutely zero talent. When I became an adult, I began painting, and I still love that, too, but I’m definitely not going to be featured in any galleries anytime soon!

But again, making art is important to me. This morning I spent editing one of my novels, which was awesome. This afternoon, I designed and created these handmade cards which feature fragments of my poetry. One of these fragments was featured earlier this month. The rest are probably new to you. All of these are from poems which appear in my new collection, Playing House (publication date TBA).

There are around a dozen different cards in this project, and all will be available for sale next weekend at the Gulf Coast Indie Book Fest. (If you’re in Houston on Saturday, come by! We’ll be at the Menil Park all day and you can get copies of Finis. and The Milk of Female Kindness — An Anthology of Honest Motherhood there.)

Anyway, here you go. I hope you like them. If you have comments on these cards — or on this year’s National Poetry Month series in general — please leave them below.