It's really thrilling to work with an illustrator - your vision expands with the addition of someone else's artwork/artistic vision.

Writing a poem is always a process of subtracting: you start with all of language available to you, and you choose a smaller field.

If I begin a poem, "I am a donkey," reason kicks in and says, "She is taking on the persona of a donkey." But if I write, "I have taken so many drugs I can't see my feet," the tendency is to take that as a confession on the part of the poet. Maybe that doesn't matter. I'd almost prefer for it to be the other way round.

"Confessional poetry" is another one of those labels. It goes in and out of fashion.

Having my poems set to music by Eric Moe has completely knocked my socks off.

People "confess" can be wildly different. I might go into the confessional and say, "Father, what is my obsession with miniatures?"

S. E. Smith's I Live in a Hut has a deceptively simple title, considering that the brain in that hut contains galaxies-worth of invention: At night when your soldiers are praying ceaselessly for less rain and more underwear my soldiers make underwear out of rain. These poems seesaw between despair and delight but delight is winning the battle. Smith is a somersaulting tightrope walker of a poet and her poems will make you look at anything and everything with new eyes: For days I tried to rub the new freckle // off my hand until I realized what it was / and began to grant it its sovereignty.