What was it like to write something for a deadline each day, knowing that it would be published and read nearly immediately? Did that change your process at all?

A couple of days in, I began to treat the writing of these poems like a conversation I was having with people who may be reading and who were experiencing the real and sustained impact the pandemic was having—and continues to have—on our day-to-day lives. I was feeling so creatively drained, so imaginatively pale and wan; my anxiety had increased, my body was exhausted by how super vigilant I had been, reading everything I could about every disastrous thing. I was missing people, craving the wild, spontaneous feast a good, live conversation could be and how nutritional those talks are, how they buoy the spirit and add something vital to the experience we’re sharing. Once I understood my role was to write an offering to this new version of conversation we were having apart and leaning in to each other, then the writing shifted and knew something about itself. I continued to feel the terror of the clock winding down every morning to the deadline I had imposed and had to figure out how to lean into that terror until it softened and I became curious and absorbed in the writing rather than the thinking about the writing. I also began to notice how this practice was changing me, reminding me of what I like doing and why. Pressing ‘send’ every day was an exquisite and unexpected joy that I can still feel trill in my body.

Topical subjects that deal with aspects of current events can be rather fleeting. Can you talk about how they weave into poetry to make something that is potentially more enduring or universal?

Given the pace of the writing—a kind of the-floor-is-lava with a stopwatch—I was curating each poem with whatever felt vital and could contribute to the operational eloquence of how each poem was thinking/moving. In this way, I think regardless of how ‘topical’ something is, if it becomes an important cog in a poem that is hopefully working interdependently within and beyond its own time, then that topicality expands beyond its current lifespan by settling in for a more durational ecosystem of meaning. In other words, it justifies itself by how it expands past itself in relevance by becoming a part of something bigger.

Has the experience of the pandemic had much impact on what you are writing about or how you are writing it—or on any other aspect of your artistic practice?

The world is different now. There is no denying the systemic ways people are being oppressed and how little accountability, if any, there is. There is no denying class divide, the violence BIPOC folks, women and children, continue to endure by the police and state. And that there is a housing crisis and that our youth are living with a climate crisis that isn’t of their making and that so many of them are in a deplorable amount of debt accrued to get an education. If anything, the pandemic is making space for all of this to become more pronounced and more real. It’s also made clear how we’re all in this together. Engaging creatively at this point feels like a significant and meaningful way of being and so I am continually alert to how I am choosing to spend my time. I feel so much gratitude for the people who are continuing to be creative and am turning to art more than ever for the sustenance it provides and for how it communicates apart from mass and social media, which feels important. I’m mostly reading right now. And I’m listening to poets talk about their work. Again for their company. I’m trying to take care of myself so I can continue to discern this chronic anxiety I’m feeling that blurs the way I see the world from the actual clouds and the last of the leaves that are so spectacularly yellow. I want there to be a feast so we can all talk about it. I like the idea of a collective effervescence. If anything, the pandemic has confirmed how vital having an art practice is to me and how much I rely on it to meaningfully converse.