Luke Rolfes Interviews Me for The Laurel Review

"Nature, to me, is less self-involved and more honest than the human world. It doesn’t hide or disguise its ugliness while also surprising us with its generosity and protectiveness."

Lean in as I speak with Luke Rolfes at The Laurel Review about nature as it relates to my beautiful new book tether & lung, as well as making art out of pain, motherhood, tyranny, and titling poems. In this interview, we share a vibrant conversation about how "[p]oetry literally kept me alive for several years" and how I believe that the first goal of writing pain is to care for pain.

"That pain is a part of yourself that is suffering and asking other parts of yourself to lean in and be with its discomfort. It’s not asking to be fixed or frozen in time. It seeks companionship. Start there, with companionship."

Luke and I talk about the "rawness" of my motherhood poems and how my whole book "is sort of this inverted Eden." I share that my poems of motherhood and national politics "speak to the limitations that those with less power have in the realms of those with more power, and how it is those with less power that are ogled and more severely judged for their activities in the face of tyranny than the tyrants themselves."

"In fact, tyrants keep the cameras focused on the oppressed."

I am grateful for Luke's smart, probing questions and feel you will glean much from this interview and the poems in tether & lung. Pre-order your copy from Texas Review Press today. Also available on Amazon.