Catechesis

I'm already starting to think about the shape my next chapbook will take. I want to write a group of poems that mashes folk and fairy tales with Roman Catholicism. I grew up a Catholic, and although my beliefs are certainly more agnostic than anything else, I was shaped by the grand aesthetics and stories of the religion. So these poems will also address childhood, especially in the way children are able to make those associative connections between ideas many adults would assume are mutually exclusive. 

Although, after a few months, I am still only three poems deep, when I found the title (back in June) I knew it would be a project that I would hold onto very stubbornly. 

Catechesis, (noun) oral religious instruction, 

formerly especially before baptism or confirmation 

That sounds a lot like folk tales, right? And so, even though the poems are still coming very slowly, the ones that survive my revising-while-writing process are strong. They have to have just the right amount of both main themes, balanced through careful language and intertwining stories. They address genesis and destruction, Catholicism and the pagan in folk & fairy tales, a strong presence of the natural world, and--above all else--girlhood.