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nonlinearity & upcoming virtual craft class

José Angel Araguz Leave a comment

Life after Ruin & Want has been nonlinear.

After publishing a fragmented memoir rooted in trauma, I spiraled into burnout. For a while, I didn’t think I’d write again. I found myself saying: I wrote the book, now to understand the life behind it.

That’s been the work: retracing my steps. Not to tidy the past, but to name and acknowledge what led me there in the first place. What came through intuition, what emerged by accident, what remained unspeakable until I let form and rhythm carry it–all of it, retraced one day and word at a time.

This process (part excavation, part self-return) has shaped my upcoming online class:

Rumination as Route: Crafting Non-Linear Personal Narratives

A 2-hour generative workshop on writing the way your mind actually moves.

This is a space for writers who want to:

  • Break free from rigid storytelling forms
  • Let thought rhythms shape structure
  • Explore fragmentation, return, and intuitive connection

We’ll read short, resonant examples. We’ll talk about what stays with us. And we’ll write—not toward a neat ending, but into the pulse of memory, image, and voice. You don’t need to have it all figured out. You don’t need a clear timeline or a clean story. Just bring your curiosity and a willingness to follow your writing wherever it wants to go.

Date & Time: Sunday June 1, 2025 @3-5pm EST
Where: Online (Zoom)
Cost: $60
Register here: https://thenotebookscollective.com/event/rumination-as-route/

If you’re looking for a space to explore, not explain, come join us.

Hope to see you there!

= José =


new poem up at Split This Rock!

José Angel Araguz Leave a comment

I’m excited to share that I have a new poem published! Check out “Every S In This Poem is Telling On Me” which is currently featured as part of Split This Rock‘s Poem of the Week series. It’s always meaningful to see my work find a home, and I’m grateful to everyone at Split This Rock for featuring this poem. This poem will also be included in The Quarry: A Social Justice Poetry Database, which, for those unfamiliar, is an amazing resource for general readers and educators alike.

“Every S In This Poem is Telling On Me” is a poem that comes out of my history with speech therapy as a child. The first draft came from a writing exercise I did alongside my students in the poetry workshop I taught last year. The exercise in question is Rita Dove’s “Ten-Minute Spill” from The Practice of Poetry.

Here’s the prompt for those interested in such things 🙂

Guidelines: Write a ten-line poem. The poem must include a proverb, adage, or familiar phrase (examples: she’s a brick house, between the devil and the deep blue sea, one foot in the grave, a stitch in time saves nine, don’t count your chickens before they hatch, once in a blue moon, the whole nine yards, a needle in a haystack) that you have changed in some way, as well as 2-3 words from the ones listed here: cliff, blackberry, needle, cloud, voice, mother, whir, lick, tank, terms, note, blade, tap, inquiry, reconcile, reproduce.

Writing this poem had me looking up the elementary school where it happened and only then realizing that it was named with my father’s initials. Go figure.

Thank you for reading and for your support!

= José =