Haunted Space Exploration: Rebekkah Leigh LaBlue
Astronauts perform some strange superstitions before they shoot off into orbit to explore the vast expanses of space. NASA commanders play cards with the tech crew the night before a launch, continuing until the commander loses a hand. Russian cosmonauts pee on the right rear tire of their transfer bus on the way to a launch. These are strange quirks, but they are crucial for these space-explorers to feel comfortable before and during a mission.
Writers also have rituals that must be performed in order to shake off bad vibes and get into a zone where they feel comfortable putting words on a page. When we read a great book, we only see the final product, and not the obsessive care put into the work environment that allowed for its creation. In SPACE EXPLORATION, our goal is to demystify writers’ environments and explore the ways in which they’ve been created and curated, and how they affect the mental spaces of the authors who inhabit them.
We asked writers to tell us about their necessary spaces; the physical spaces as well as the desired headspace to write. We asked about their rituals— special meals that have to be eaten pre-writing sesh, only writing in purple ink, lucky pieces of clothing that may have once inspired a particularly powerful passage. We asked them to engage our senses and tell us which aspects of process must be deliberate and what is arbitrary. These are the spaces they shared with us.
This is the one of five features from select authors in our HAUNTED issue, this time featuring Rebekkah Leigh LaBlue, who has two poems in HFR 67.
2. Winter Finch Forecast from the Finch Research Network
Rebekkah Leigh LaBlue is a poet, ornithologist, and environmental educator pseudo-native to Asheville, North Carolina by way of Long Island. The recipient of scholarships from Bread Loaf Environmental, her work appears with Figure 1, Muzzle, and Black Warrior Review, among others. She reads poetry for The Adroit Journal and bands birds—presently—in Appalachia.