A Dream Involving Family & Poetry

I don’t remember all the details of this dream, but my immediate family members had decided to create a poetry book (possibly for Valentine’s Day?), including three poems by each of us. Or at least by each of the women; I don’t remember seeing my dad or any husbands in this dream.

It was handled as if this was a literary magazine project and one of my sisters was the editor. We had to send our poetry submissions to her. Instead of responding by email or mail though, during a family event, she announced that every one’s poems had been accepted, except for mine.

At first I didn’t say anything other than a fake overly friendly sounding ‘okay’.

But then I decided to stand up and openly state that I knew it was because my family didn’t like my CONTENT. After all, I was the only family member with a degree in creative writing, who frequently submitted my poetry and frequently had it accepted for publication – and now, none of my family members liked my poetic content enough to accept me – and none of them were even poets! None of them read contemporary poetry or wrote/submitted poetry EXCEPT for this one family project – but apparently even though I AM a poet, I didn’t fit in to the family project idea of poetry.

As I gave this announcement, they all looked at me and each other as if any regular person would know that my content was over the top, unacceptable, unlikeable, and OFFENSIVE.

I left the room, but could still hear my mom and sister whispering about how my offensive content did not fit into this family.

***

(This sounds like more of a ‘not fitting in to the family’ dream as opposed to a ‘poetry rejection’ dream, because for the most part, if some publication does not relate to/like/accept my poetry, I don’t really care all that much, since plenty of others do. BUT ever since I was a teenager, part of me has felt like I don’t really fit in, including to my own family and I do really care about/love my family, and I AM really passionate about my poetry, so it was an interesting fusion.

I’m not sure quite sure where it came from though, because it’s not like I’ve been having any family issues or poetry issues related to me personally recently. I mean it’s true that my family members do not really relate to my poetry, but it’s not like they talk negatively about me because of that or call me overly offensive.

Maybe the dream was partially inspired by my Valentine’s Day ‘what is love and what are true, in-depth relationships’ thoughts and questions and the fact that I have been recently thinking about the next Blood Pudding Press collaborative project.)