The brands with which we surround ourselves prop us up, make us feel sexy and beautiful, when in reality we're pretty dumpy creatures.

Writing essays and teaching composition have helped me immensely in writing poetry, because they've forced me to focus on the structure of ideas.

The brands with which we surround ourselves prop us up, make us feel sexy and beautiful, when in reality we're pretty dumpy creatures.

I want to leave my readers with a sequence of ideas/phrases that makes them question something they'd taken for granted. Or that confuses them to the point that they laugh, but contains one or two phrases/lines that stick in their minds.

The brand is lying about something, or at least misrepresenting it. When I read a bottle of shampoo or moisturizer or other beauty product, I always perceive a dark subtext. The words haunt me. It comes across as humorous to the reader/audience, but in fact the words really do make me a little bit queasy. Nothing is as easy or natural as consumer brands want us to think - no problem is as resolvable. Your hair will fall out, eventually. Yet we do have these brands, and we line our shelves with them. There's an inherent irony.

Negative space is important. When I teach students to read critically I advise them to look for what the author isn't saying just as carefully as for what he or she is.

Poetry is a way for me to explore a tingly feeling, to let it play itself out, and also to map it. I feel like I'm making little star maps when I write poems.