I want [my daughter] to look at the world through the underside of a glass-bottom boat, to look through a microscope at the galaxies that exist on the pinpoint of a human mind.

I write poetry to figure things out. Any time I’m trying to wrap my head around something, poetry is like a puzzle-solving strategy for me.

One thing that I believe is that every time I write something, I am taking the time to celebrate. Even if I am writing a sad story or an angry poem, I am still giving those stories my time and attention.

I don't think I ever had a morning where I woke up and said I'm going to be a professional poet. I know I've always loved poetry, I've always loved writing poetry and I've always loved sharing poetry. I've also always known that I wanted that to somehow be a very large part of my life and I'm very fortunate that it's such a large part of my life.

Sometimes I am puzzling over something for months and months and the poem gets created in small bursts and rewritten a hundred times, and chopped up and put back together, etc. Occasionally, though rarely, a poem just plops out of my head fully-formed. But always it is a blueprint of what my brain is trying to navigate at that moment.

Think it's so unfair when people think that you're not a "real artist" unless you're getting paid for it....I personally know so many poets that work a 9 to 5 in a cubicle and come home and write poetry. Their poetry is just as powerful and moving as anything that I've ever written, if not more.

I want to welcome folks to poetry, especially those who may have previously felt unwelcome; I want to celebrate everyone who is trying to make sense of this world through poetry the way I try to.