Rami Farawi: “This poem started from me trying to add a shape to the news, a density, like something you could mine for every day, like it’s a natural resource. I guess, when I thought about it like that, I was amazed by how much energy we put into reporting on what’s happening, and by how we watch the news like we have no idea what is.”
Nicholas Montemarano: “When Donald Trump visited Iowa this week, he continued his longstanding tactic of fearmongering about ‘terrorists’ and people from ‘mental asylums’ crossing the border from Mexico to the United States. My imagination took things from there: How would Trump respond to something seemingly miraculous happening in Mexico? The double meaning of the title occurred to me only after I’d written this persona poem.” (web)
Raquel Vasquez Gilliland: “Nearly two years after having a nervous breakdown after the birth of my son, I started to examine this experience with poetry. Mental illness runs on my mother’s side of the family—with the Vasquez women, specifically—and in searching for the reasons why, I found stories. Some of these are from the lips of my grandmother and mother, some are ones I unearthed inexplicably, from the fertile dirt where poems grow.” (web)
Teddy Devitt: “I write poems because it feels like filling an empty space or solving a puzzle. I enjoy making moments, thoughts, and feelings into something concrete.” (web)
Bruce McRae: “‘Grass In My Hair’ was written in bed during the summer of 2008. In fact, all my poems are written lying down. It was inspired by the heat of August, a cornfield from my youth in Southern Ontario, and The Wizard of Oz.” (web)
James Crews: “I live in Shaftsbury, Vermont, with my husband and have been writing poetry since the third grade when my teacher, Mrs. Brown, required us to recite a new poem each week, and I thought it would be more fun if I wrote and memorized my own. I believe in the power of writing to heal and release, and write the poems I most would want to meet in the world.” (web)
Bruce Cohen: “My favorite quote is from a Wislawa Zymborska poem that reads, ‘I prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems.’”