OMG: Stuff I've Been Feeling Lately is Being Adapted into a Song Cycle

What's a song cycle?

Stuff I’ve Been Feeling Lately continues to find readers years after its release and has sold nearly 100,000 copies to date.

Now, it is being adapted into a song cycle and will premiere in September in Saratoga Springs, NY.

In the opera “family,” a song cycle is a set of related poems that share a common theme and are performed musically and sequentially as a unit. Produced by Evan Mack and featuring world-renowned mezzo-soprano Meg Marino, I only told a handful of people in my life about Stuff I’ve Been Feeling Lately: the Song Cycle because I could hardly believe this was happening; it all felt so surreal, and I didn’t want to jinx its existence!

I wrote Stuff I’ve Been Feeling Lately in 2015 while dangling from my final straw. I’ve said in many an interview that writing Stuff I’ve Been Feeling Lately was an exercise in manifesting my own hope during a time when I needed to believe life was going to get better. It was self-published in 2016, was a finalist in the Goodreads Choice Awards, and then was traditionally published in 2017 by Andrews McMeel Publishing. 

This book kicked off my career as a poet and became would the first book in my popular “mixtape poetry” series, followed by Sorry I Haven’t Texted You Back and The Music Was Just Getting Good. The books are uniquely structured in two sections: “Side A” comprises 92 original poems, while “Side B” offers blackout versions (erasure poetry) of those same 92 poems. Each poem is accompanied by a recommended song at the end.

In a few months, I will sit in a seat inside the Arthur Zankel Music Center. The lights will dim, the piano will start, and I will listen to my origin story in a way I never imagined possible.

I had the honor of interviewing Evan and Meg about this upcoming production and the effort that went into creating it. Thanks to READ Poetry for publishing the interview! Please check it out.