“‘I Owe You a Poem’ pretty much outlines what I feel about poetry: that I’d love it to be something we use on a daily basis. We’ve spent the past century mainly asking poems to be smarter than us, that if they don’t need to be explained down to us by someone with a PhD then what good are they? I do like a good, difficult poem, but I also love a poem that’s clear; and I’ve seen how writing down a feeling in a way that makes others feel that precise shade of it takes a mountain of effort which isn’t recognized enough in much of our writing culture. In any case, look me up.”

“I grew up with stories of the Partition of India, and the trauma and heartbreak it inflicted upon millions, including both sets of my grandparents. I am struck by the continued sacrifices and loss of lives required to uphold the identities of these two nations, which share so many social, cultural, linguistic and artistic commonalities, because they were at one point, one.”

“As a kid growing up on the west side of Chicago, my ideas about life and love were pretty much defined by whatever Motown song was out at the moment. I began working on a manuscript about the formidable sway Motown music held over me, which was particularly timely because the label had just celebrated its 50th anniversary. In the midst of crafting the book, however, I realized that what I was really writing about was being part of that first confounded generation born in cluttered, segregated northern cities after our parents had migrated from Alabama, from Mississippi, from Arkansas, from Louisiana. We began an urban existence with no real guidance—and music, among other things, raised us. ‘Tavern. Tavern. Church. Shuttered tavern,’ chronicles a bus ride down Madison St., the main strip slicing through Chicago’s west side. The street, the center of the community’s commerce, was burned flat during the riots following Martin Luther King’s assassination, and was only rebuilt years later when white folks realized its proximity to downtown, and therefore its worth.”

“During my first dozen years as a haiku poet, I avoided haibun. At the time, I was working on a novel, and I knew that if I let myself dip my toe into haibun, I’d fall in love with the form and my novel would never come to fruition. Then I accidentally read Tick-Tock by Lew Watts. I haven’t worked on that novel since. Good haibun satisfy my love for haiku, for prose, for linking-and-shifting, for narrative, for limitless creativity, for poetry.”

“In this poem there’s a house I used to live in, a child I used to care for, and a relationship I used to be in. But I’m not really in the poem. What I like about poetry: the way words and phrases, in repetition, grow new meanings and become larger than their origins. I like making strange bedfellows out of phrases we normally use in different contexts.”

“I am 18 years of age and a proud member of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma. I believe the most intoxicating aspect about poetry is its tendency to defy the structures that we’ve built around ourselves to comprehend the world in a material, systematic way, and open our eyes, ears, and mind to the unspoken insight of the soul. I truly believe that, in the face of rising hate, greed, and abuse of power, poetry is a form of unapologetic liberation.”