Ever hear that expression, "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times"? That's what high school was like for me. Both of those - all the time.

Poetry is like a puzzle-solving strategy for me. I like to poem my way through tricky questions and ideas. That's about the only consistent thread through my poem-creation process.

Poetry makes people nervous. Especially in schools.

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.

I don't think it's about art being a career but it's about making sure that if art is something that you love, something that brings you joy, it's about you having a duty to find time in your life for that thing that brings you joy...even if it can only be a small amount.

Most days it feels as if the world is whirling around me and I am standing still. In slow motion, I watch the colors blur; people and faces all become a massive wash.

Things that I have a hard time being able to fully grasp, sometimes writing the poem helps me work through it. Or I get to the end of the poem and I still haven't figured anything out, but at least I have a new poem out of it.