Alixa Brobbey: “There is currently a cocoa shortage. I cannot think of chocolate, or Valentine’s Day, without thinking about child labor in my father’s homeland, Ghana.” (web)
Julie Bruck: “To decline, to refuse, dig in one’s heels, to resist like a small dog its leash—I find that gesture so alluring, such a sweet, guilty pleasure. Writing ‘Love to But’ also furnished an opportunity to complain (another underrated pastime) about a neighbor who considers mobile phone use a public harangue even as the world ends. Doh! I guess Mr. de B. and the speaker of this poem aren’t so different.”
Isabella DeSendi: “I wrote this poem after telling two of my poet friends the story of my tio’s death, including his vision of being abducted by aliens just days after we’d received the news about his deportation. My mom was still trying to figure out how to fight the government’s decision, how to break the news. My friends and I were huddled in a small circle during the intermission of a reading when I decided to share the story with them. One friend, Cat, turned to me and said, ‘Bella, this is a poem.’ She was right. This piece is an elegy for my tio, but it’s also a lamentation for immigrants in this country—and ultimately a song of praise for my mother, whose strength, generosity, and capacity for enduring I am constantly in awe of.” (web)
Jessica Moll: “Since I just wrote a sonnet yesterday, today I’d like to rest. My fingers ache from tapping syllables against the desk. I haven’t slept—the loud iambic tick’s a clock inside my head. I hate the task I give myself, of cramming my mind’s sprawl into the structure of a formal poem. I think the next time that a sonnet calls, I won’t answer. I’ll pretend I’m not home. But watch, tomorrow I’ll be riding down a pitted Oakland street, pedaling hard to get to work on time, and as I spin, I’ll feel the meter in my pulse and start to think in rhyme. You’ve had this kind of lover—as soon as you break up, you’re back together.”
Dusty Bryndal: “I have written poetry all my life, but began building confidence as a writer and poet when my friend would make me read my poems out loud in her cozy, art-filled living room. I have since found a writing community who taught me that it is OK to write about the raw, ragged details of losing a child and that people want to read about sad things. For the last five years, writing poetry has helped shape my grief and my healing as I navigate the waters of my son’s tragic ending.” (web)
Bruce Taylor: “Found one of these ‘facts’ just cruising the WWW, spent the morning looking for more and ended up with two pages. Let the whole mess sit for a while, then as Rodin said, I ‘knocked away anything’ that wasn’t poem. They are all ‘true’ except one; I’ve forgotten which.” (web)
Roberta Beary: “Age 15, I stumble upon a tattered anthology called The Book of Living Verse. It becomes my talisman. Saving my life again and again. In my forties, as one version of my life ends, my mantra is—Write Every Day, No Matter What Catastrophe. Twenty years on, I don’t know if I write to save others or myself. But I know the why doesn’t matter.” (web)
