Cassidy Lewis: “To me, poetry is a way to use my head as an outlet for expression—inside I’ve always been able to find words and images that can be blended together to describe almost anything. Not only feelings I’ve experienced, but things I’ve seen and experienced, even the most mundane, can be poetic in different ways. Through poetry, I can look into others’ heads too, and for a moment, see the world through a pair of eyes different from my own.”
Karen Benke: “I studied with Kim Addonizio in 1993 while pursuing my master’s degree at the University of San Francisco. Kim is generous, tender, tough, and accurate with her honesty. She made a better poet out of me by her example, by all the detailed ways she shows up to see and capture the world’s heartbreak and grit. She taught me how to rigorously question if what is being included in the container of a poem is truly necessary. As I edit, I can still hear her say, ‘Here’s a needless piece of information.’” (web)
Catherine Pond: “Scorpio is a water sign, and I wrote this poem for my cousin Jurni so she will remember that being ruled by water is ultimately a gift, though the depth of it can sometimes overwhelm you.” (web)
Marvin Artis: “I think one of the things I’m most interested in, in poetry, is the opportunity to connect things that don’t appear to be connected. To bring my own disparate parts together and to also build that infrastructure internally, and then be able to apply that to my relationships with other people. The more connections I can find between disconnected things, the better my connections are with others.”
Chris Anderson: “I’ve been reading a lot lately about science and religion and about environmental theology, and that led me to Darwin and to this wonderful biography by Janet Browne. It’s so beautifully written, and Darwin comes out of it as such a fascinating English-country gentlemen. I found myself oddly identifying with him, even though—and then exactly because—I realized that in the poems I started to write, in this sequence, I was getting him wrong, sort of turning him into a believer when he wasn’t. That became the theme of the sequence. Darwin became a way for me to explore the border between science and religion in myself.” (web)
Rayon Lennon: “My work operates in that magical gray area between poetry and fiction. For this poem, I wanted to dramatize a number of the reasons behind the recent outrage over children being separated from their parents at the border. In the news, the focus has been placed on children and how being separated from their families adversely affects them—while their parents hunt for the American dream. You don’t have to pick a side on this issue to empathize with the children. This poem widens the scope on the issue—by exploring what happens generally when parents leave their children behind to pursue the American dream. My father left Jamaica when I was born to work on apple farms in Connecticut. His departure decimated the family. He overstayed his visa and did not return to Jamaica for several years (he returned briefly after becoming a U.S. resident; he and my mother eventually divorced because of the long separation). I was six and my sister was around eleven years old when our father left for good. She changed the day he left and has never been the same. My relationship with her suffered because of this. This poem—an imagined journey to see my sister—attempts to address and repair the harm done. I think I’ve only hugged my sister once. It was the day after my wedding. It still shocks me how shocked she was when I pulled her in for a long hug. It made me sad then to think about all the love that didn’t exist between us.” (web)