A couple weeks back, I went hiking along a bluff trail on Whidbey Island with a local hiking group. It was somehow a cloudless October sky despite the prediction of rain, and after hiking high above the beach, we found ourselves dancing with the incoming tide lapping at our feet. So close to high tide, there wasn’t a ton of room to keep dry, and I wasn’t particularly concerned about wet feet if I could find a cool agate or piece of jasper.

Searching for rocks is a core memory for me. Ever since I can remember, my parents would walk beaches with us and show us how to identify rocks and shells. When I got older, we took our rockhounding off the beach and dug into the ground for petrified wood and star garnets. We’d collect our treasures, sometimes polish them, and display them in jars.

Years have passed since I’ve collected rocks with my family. Adding to this, my family isn’t together like it once was both in distance and relation. But when I look at those jars of shells and stones, I’m instantly transported back to a time where everything was, in some senses, much less broken in that way that only the blur of nostalgia can really accomplish.

As I was walking with a hiker along Whidbey’s Ebeys Landing and talking with her about this, she’d expressed that she loves to pick up treasures but leave them behind. Because objects are heavy, and when there’s a time in life where you need to get out, that it’s simply easier to not have excess.

This struck me in that moment about how right she was. In instances where I needed to leave, there was always some awkward or unsafe need to return for the sake of an object (or a household of them). It also struck me how, regardless of the emotion an object carries, that there is always weight. And that’s where today’s writing prompt is coming from.

For today’s prompt, write about an object or a series of objects that:

• Carried you through a tough season.

• You thought had carried you but actually weight you down.

• You chose to leave behind and how that felt/what it represented.

• You never had but believed one day you might. And how those expectations manifested into something potentially surprising.

• You refuse to let define you.

I’d love to hear about your writing today! Share a snippet in the comments if you feel up for it.

S: Thank you Esteban for joining me today for this interview! To get us started, would you please provide a brief overview of your book and its themes to my subscribers?

Esteban: Yes, thank you for having me. At the River centers on a young boy’s journey with his grandmother to Mexico. Over the course of a weekend afternoon, as we travel from one country into the next, we come face to face with fatigued security guards, desperate children, eager street vendors, and ominous receptionists, each reflecting the indifference and uncertainty of a mercurial border.

S: I love how you’re breaking apart notions surrounding borders while also expanding your own boundaries regarding genre, narrative arch, and voice. What books inspired you as you wrote?

Esteban: There were four books that really inspired this collection: James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake, for its linguistic intensity; Roberto Bolaño’s 2666, for its relentless portrayal of violence; Cormac McCarthy’s Suttree, for its feverish depictions of a lonely mind, and W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz, for its fearless blending of fact and fiction. Those four books, and more importantly those four writers, really helped me set the foundation of what I envisioned At the River to be, and from there, I intensified a narrative voice that sought to mimic the complexity of a people and landscape that defies any one definition.

S: You had many inspirations guiding you as you wrote, but also these all together sound really difficult to piece together. What about your book challenged you the most, and what came to you with ease? Why?

Esteban: The thing that challenged me most was trying to create a voice that was both knowledgeable and innocent. Harold Bloom once said that the Portuguese writer José Saramago had the ability to make the narrators of his novels both wise and ignorant. I love that description, because if you read any of Saramago’s novels, you will understand how quickly you, as a reader, can go from knowing everything about the world to knowing nothing at all. I wanted to capture that feeling with my speaker, so I had to make sure the word choice and sentence structure matched with someone trying to look at the world from all angles. Once I hit that register, I could let the narrative take on a life of its own.

S: A character that is both wise and ignorant sounds like a delicate balance and also like it takes a very specific protagonist for a very specific story to make it work. Was this your aha moment? Or which part of your book was your “aha moment?”

Esteban: The “aha moment” really came even before I started writing the book. I read Joyce’s Ulysses in 2023, right before heading to Ireland, so I thought that picking up Finnegan’s Wake would give me that same rush (and confusion) that I experienced then. While I had read a paragraph or two, it was always just in passing (at Barnes & Noble and Half Price Books), but when I finally decided I would undertake that reading project, I was completely blown away. I had no idea what was happening, and I did a ton of research to ground myself in the book. I didn’t even make it past page 50, and I have still not finished it to this day, but I remember thinking, as soon as I was ten pages in, “I can do this too,” which is the feeling I first got when I started writing poetry more than a decade ago.

I didn’t create my own Finnegan’s Wake (I don’t think anyone can), but I did forge a style that pushed the limits of what I was used to, and I was surprised with the momentum I kept throughout the writing process (I wrote this book in about four months, which were some intense months!).

S: Is that pushing the limits of what you were used to writing about part of what contributed to your healing/grief journey?

Esteban: The book helped me realize that I’m searching for what cannot be defined, what lives on the margins and creeps its way to the center. I’ve written nine poetry collections before this one, and while I’m not ready to hang my hat on the genre, I am ready to push it beyond my own comfort zone. For me, that’s a form of acceptance, one that has relieved me of the burden of trying to write what is expected of me and which has given me permission to explore fiction and hybrid forms.

But beyond practical matters, At the River allowed me to reflect on my childhood and see things in ways that I didn’t before. I really had to navigate past memories, which have become a labyrinth with age, and recall those moments that I crossed over with my grandmother, putting myself on the bridge again. I had to relive my experience of going to the dentist office with my mother, of getting a haircut with my uncle, and watching my family buy garlic and vegetables and bottles of alcohol. I had to be innocent again and step into a world that required my full attention.

S: I love how you approached that question in both a practical and personal sense. Healing and grief emerge in our writing, and in us, in sometimes unexpected ways, and I think your journey and At the River really lean into that well. For my last deep dive question: if readers could only take away one thing from your book, what do you hope they carry with them?

Esteban: I hope readers find themselves in this work, even if they don’t live in this corner of the world or have never visited. More importantly, I hope they are able to see the border in a new light, to realize its complexity, and to understand that there isn’t one version that fits into a news highlight or a social media headline. The Rio Grande Valley and northern Mexico are rich in history and culture, and all it takes is for us to really look and listen to understand what and who exists here.

S: Thank you for giving readers the space to see themselves in your work and to see the border in a new light. If readers are wanting to see themselves in more of your work, where can they buy your book and connect with you?

Esteban: Thanks for inviting me for this interview! You can pick up a copy of At the River at Fonograf Edition’s website, or your local bookstore, and they can follow me on Instagram at @ejrod11. And below is my full bio if you’re wanting to hear more about my other work:

Esteban Rodríguez is the author of ten collections of poetry, most recently At the River (Fonograf Editions 2026), and the essay collection Before the Earth Devours Us (Split/Lip Press 2021). His work has appeared in New England Review, Seneca Review, Poetry Daily, and American Life in Poetry. He is the interviews editor at the EcoTheo Review, senior book reviews editor at Tupelo Quarterly, and associate poetry editor at AGNI. With Jennifer De Leon and Ben Black, he coedited To Never Have Risked Our Lives: An AGNI Portfolio of Central American and Mexican Diaspora Writing. He and his wife own and operate Love Letter Coffee in McAllen, Texas.

“The Road,” a poem from my Louise Bogan Award finalist manuscript Break/Up, is coming out this November in June Road Press’s anthology Places on the Way: A Poetry Road Trip.

This book officially sets out for a road trip of its own on November 10th, but the collection is available for pre-order now. Also cool is the audiobook release, featuring each poem as read by its poet, which I think is a super sweet touch to this project.

And speaking of poets, there are so many talented voices featured in this collection, including Kateri Kosek, Rebecca Hart Olander, Chloe Yelena Miller, and Kelly Gray, just to name a few of the 100 poets in here! The collection features poems that remind us where we’ve been, who we’ve been, what we’ve left behind, and all the different ways we have to arrive (if we ever truly arrive anywhere).

A road trip like this is honestly the perfect way to lean into this idea of challenging seasons that I brought up last week, so I wanted to share my poem ahead of time with my paid subscribers and dive into the process and craft of this poem.

So, without further gabbing, I introduce you to “The Road:”

Read more

This isn’t to say that writing ever took place in the easy years. After all, I began my writing journey in 2020. Need I say more?

That being said, from 2022 until 2024, some life shifts I’d hoped would bring me more fulfillment turned into one of the hardest seasons of my life. A season where I had to reexamine what I’d believed I’d wanted and decide if holding on to that was worth the self abandonment I was fulfilling. A season where I needed more courage than ever to let go of what I knew in my heart wasn’t right for me. A season where I had to trust myself.

As I thought back over this time period, I realized how many hard years there have been:

Working 80 hours a week because I couldn’t find a salaried position in my degree field for the first 6 months after I graduated.

Working 60+ hours a week between a full-time job and part-time graduate TA ship. On top of completing coursework.

Being a first-year public school teacher during a global pandemic.

Being under-resourced and under-prepared to be a first-year teacher in a rural district.

Being in a long-term relationship while it was actively failing while actively still trying to repair it.

Being a first-generation college student.

Being a first-generation college student newly diagnosed with an anxiety disorder.

And, and, and…

The “hard years” are an ebb and flow, a nonlinear and not-always-predictable cycle that we will spend our whole lives bracing for.

Yet even knowing this, that doesn’t make the process of returning to writing after “the hard years” any easier. And when I return from a challenging season, I find that whatever projects I’d been working on feel more distant, as if the woman who bore that project was a completely different woman from the one sitting before it now. I’m the same woman more or less, but mentally, there’s a change when we come back from altering seasons.

My thesis for my MFA project, the manuscript which was selected as a finalist for the 2026 Louise Bogan Award through Trio House Press, is a good example of this. I started writing the poems in this collection during 2022. This was the start of a hard season, but it was before I knew something was wrong. Every time I sat to write or revise a poem, I felt like I was reading someone else’s sugarcoated narrative as they forced it to be a poem. It annoyed me, and it turns out, it annoyed me because that deep down, I knew this narrative was wrong.

Even before my personal life stuff went from rough to really rough, I felt like I could no longer write into what felt so wrong.

So I wrote wrong in order to write what was right.

I wrote poems about the relationships I was in breaking apart instead of staying together. I wrote the moments where I knew they should have ended but forced them to continue out of fear. I wrote these poems in ways that were broken—some without punctuation, some without line breaks, some with a speaker voice that wasn’t able (or willing) to keep it together for anyone.

And that is where my author voice began changing. Where I shifted, not just now, but for the long haul.

I realized that my previous draft hadn’t been honest. Or vulnerable. Or even interesting. Because my previous writer self refused to dive into the dark waters when it feels so much safer to skim the surface.

And what’s crazy about this is that I know this skimming doesn’t make for compelling writing. I abandoned my spot at the computer and went to my stack of MFA books I’d read so far. Every margin note showcased an image that stuck out, a vulnerable moment the speaker said out loud, what the speaker refused to say but was implied through the poem’s syntax or form.

The proof of what I’d learned and what I needed to keep doing was right in front of me the whole time. But it took living in that particular hard season and writing that particular project that outgrew its initial idea to help me see that.

My Echoes & Ink Community—mi comunidad—while our aches can be our lowest point, they can also be our jumping off point. At least in our creative processing. As we continue to lean into autumn and winter, the seasons of ends and reflection, I wanted to be sure to touch on this idea. So next time you feel like you’re on the precipice of something unlike what you set out to do or have ever done before, or the next time you are feeling like a shell of yourself, create like you’ve never created before. And I don’t mean to just sit down in front of the project and force yourself to do it the same way you’ve been doing it. No, I mean:

If you’re working on a series/study of a subject, try painting it upside down or try a whole new color palate or even try removing it of its color.

If you’re writing a novel, take your main character or antagonist and put them in a situation outside of your plotted events. Maybe put them in the situation you’re in right now. See how they do. Learn from this scene to learn how to proceed with the story you’re working on. You may just find that the character you’ve been writing isn’t the right version of them to be telling their story.

If you’re writing a poem, try removing the line breaks. Try changing the speaker from a person to an object in the space where the poem is happening. Try removing the constraints of grammar or the expectation of chronology. Try starting a poem with the last line of the draft you have written.

Try whatever you can to break yourself from the creative pattern you feel in your heart isn’t right for the project but that you don’t yet know how to break. And then, when you find a crack, wedge deeper into that. Turn that crack into a break that turns into a shatter. Your shift in process, vision, and voice—it lives there.

What is a creative lesson you learned after returning from “the hard years?” What is a project you’re working on now that you’re feeling like the person who set out to complete that project is a stranger to you now? Let’s talk it out in the comments!

The news of what the Cornell Seven did (and what a group chat of men failed to stop) has awakened many feelings within women—sadness, depression, rage.

This collective grief… even though it’s easy for most women to feel it and understand its roots (1 in 3 women have experienced sexual assault within their lifetime), it isn’t easy to express how exactly it feels. Or how to even talk about it.

I know that for myself personally, I’ve had a hard time putting into words the anger and heartbreak I feel for the woman who had her life (and academic dreams) upended by the cruel actions of that group of men. And the anger and heartbreak I feel about the concern folks have about ruining these men’s lives while the ruins of Jane Doe aren’t treated with that same level of concern. And that this pattern of who receives concern and belief persists across sexual violence incidents.

When I feel lost for words, I often turn to books of authors that always seem to have the right words. Their words allow me a landing pad for empathy and validation. Sometimes, to help me process my own feelings, I borrow their words (and credit them!) because they’ve moved me so deeply.

The Prompt:

To help you find the words to work through the collective grief you may be feeling (or the empathy you may be feeling for women right now), I encourage you to find a book about or an author who dives into feminine rage.

This book could be addressing sexual violence, but it doesn’t have to be. Open the book to a random page to find a line that you feel in your bones, or open to a poem you know that particularly resonates with you and borrow a line from that. Use that line to write a golden shovel poem.

If you’re lost on what books to start with, I recommend:

• Emily Skaja’s debut Brute.

• Lessons on Expulsion by Ericka L. Sánchez

• Daughter of Salt by Leila Farjami

• Killing Marias by Claudia Castro Luna

• Set the Bone by Jillian Stacia

If you post your poem online, I’d love to see how your golden shovel turns out and how it’s in conversation with other poems written out of this same grief.

If you’re not one to post this sort of thing online or don’t want to share, please drop in the comments a favorite feminine rage poem/book.

Enjoy!

1. Michael DuBon’s debut poetry collection, Fragilidad y Free Dissociation, is emerging from Girl Noise Press in 2027! This book seeks to reconcile personal, political, technocratic, romantic, and geographic trauma all in one collection. Michael puts such sweet energy into the literary community, and you’ll want to experience the culmination of his writing practice for this debut! Be sure to follow Michael on Instagram @dubonmad1 and Also follow Girl Noise Press on Instagram for more updates as Fall 2027 grows near.

2. I’ve been waiting since 2022 for Vincent Rendoni’s next book, and Red Hen Press is delivering in 2027! Dead Chicano Mixtape is a poetry collection that pairs absent fathers with Kaiju-sized abuelas, and past-their-prime tios with underworld deities, and superpowered sisters with Speedy Gonzalez, all asking: how do you live? Every time I hear Vincent read, I’m deeply moved (be it to tears, laughter, or both), so this is another collection of his that you won’t want to miss! Stay up to date about this publication by following Red Hen Press’s website and Instagram, and also by following Vincent on Instagram @warshingtonian

3. This next one is coming out in November of this year, so you won’t have to wait as long! In his 4th poetry collection, out with Acre Books, Jose Hernandez Diaz is bringing The Lighthouse Tattoo to us. Included in this book are Jose’s signature surrealist prose poems, among others, where the tattoo itself becomes evidence of a trauma survived, an apt metaphor for the book as a whole. Every book from Jose is a treat, so don’t wait too long to pre-order this book. You can also follow Jose on Instagram @jose_hdz_dz

4. This last release is the furthest away, but it comes with other cool, multi-genre works sprinkled between now and then. Jennifer Maritza McCauley’s poetry collection Tumbao is slated for a 2029 release from Texas Review Press. This book features jazz poems, which is such a neat way to portray the speaker’s empowerment through KC and Puerto Rican sound. Now, I know 2029 is a long time to wait, so please also support Jennifer’s other upcoming publications, including Recognition, a collection of short fiction, and also Versus, a poetry collection. You can read about all Jennifer’s upcoming released on her website. You can also follow her on Instagram @maritza4770

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BONUS!

Also including these two books I’m hyped about that were just released this month (because viva los libros!):

Claudia Castro Luna’s 10 year anniversary bilingual edition of Esta Ciudad/This City (Floating Bridge Press) bridges languages and communities, and her memoir The Flowers Along the Way (Northwestern University Press) portrays of love, self-determination, and the search for home amidst complex memories that that can’t be shaken decades after escaping El Salvador’s civil war. Follow Claudia on Instagram @claudiacastroluna

Esteban Rodriguez’s narrative, cross-genre book At the River (out with Fonograf Editions) asks what it means to live on the border, and how one can come to terms with the symbolic weight of crossing between two worlds. Follow Esteban on Instagram @ejrod11

I was captivated from the moment I read the title: I Am Trying to Love the Whole World.

Aren’t we all? Is that not one of the most human statements ever, just laid bare on the cover of this book? Just when we need it most as we struggle to love this world with all its heartache, grief, greed, neglect, and violence?

The vulnerability doesn’t end with the title. From cover to cover, across evolving (and challenging) political climates, to the pandemic, to the loss of a dear friend, each poem in Jenny Browne’s latest book through Boa Editions serves as an elegy and a meditation. Each poem remains tender amidst the speaker’s loud and quiet moments alike, and this is what makes the book a powerful read.

I know that “vulnerability” isn’t technically a craft element, but how else can we categorize this word? If a craft element is a writerly tool/technique that authors use to shape a reader's experience, then Browne’s use of vulnerability is in fact craft. And it is so effective in her shaping of these poems.

One of my favorite instances of vulnerability is in “A Woman Finds Her Husband, Kerch, Crimeo, January 1942.” The poem begins with a sentiment by Stalin about how a million deaths are a statistic but one single death is a tragedy. The speaker relates this saying to a photograph of a woman picking up her husband’s body. Then the speaker relates both of these things to “…a day already spent / pacing the ever-exposed halls of surgical oncology, / listening as the nurse clipped each of forty-eight / staples from K’s stomach… and it was then / I tried to tell her statistics aren’t people when of course they / are both,” (pg 30, lns 10-13 and 15-16).

These jumps between moments in a poem are vulnerable in and of themselves—moving from thought to thought without exact linearity. But the level of detail Browne enacts in these lines takes the vulnerability a step further. The speaker could describe her friend’s deteriorating physical state, or even her funeral. Instead, they take us to the staples, the clipping and pulling. Just to prove a point. Yes, in terms of cancer survivability and odds, there are statistics. But when it comes to our loved ones living through that diagnosis, it’s also more tragedy than statistic in that moment. This moment further blurs the “line” set forth by the Stalin quote at the beginning, and it also makes the idea of trying to love the whole world so hard in this moment because, well, who can love watching their loved one have staples removed from their stomach? Or who can love the process of watching their love wither when the love in their chests, our chests, is fiercer by the day?

Another spectacular showcasing of vulnerability as craft is “Leaves Eddied Over the Earth’s Scars.” This poem begins with the trademark phrase for this collection, and then all expectations break loose:

“I am trying to love the whole

world as I loved one

mutilated girl, quietly in the dark

she has pressed six blistering rows

to her thigh with a needle held

in flame I am trying to praise

the long gentle talk of feeling

all the feelings when they fall,” (pg 35, lns 1-8).

One thing I noticed right away is the unexpected love: for a girl who may not normally receive much love from others amidst the throes of drug use and bodily destruction. Then, the cascading of sentence after sentence without punctuation to contain the “feeling / all the feelings.” This punctuation-less pattern continues until the end of the poem, where the speaker’s young daughter is trying to put the soft plush of her stuffed rabbit back into the animal.

What another vulnerable way to try to love the whole world, with this noticing. Because when the hard stuff of the world surrounds us, child or adult, we spend our wholes lives trying to keep some softness alive in us.

All in all, Jenny Browne’s collection I Am Trying to Love the Whole World is exactly that: an attempt to to nurture the softness inside us. A vulnerable chronicling of staying present while grieving people, places, and climates no longer here while still trying to love your life in the future tense when that future is without those departed. A detailed memorial of sweet mint tea, the breath of wild garlic, the soccer dad reading Schopenhaur, the butts of Texas fireflies, cheesing one nacho chip at a time, handfuls of platinum hair, I love you, and I love you too.

Get your copy of I Am Trying to Love the Whole World by Jenny Browne from Boa Editions or from my Bookshop.org Storefront.

You can also follow Jenny’s writing journey on her website:

https://www.jennybrowne.com/

And you can follow her on Instagram @jennybrownepoetry

Today’s post is for paid subscribers only! You’re getting a super secret poem, as I don’t generally publish my poems online until after they’ve been in a book or literary magazine. This poem has never been seen, nor did it make the final cut into my debut poetry book Raíces, Relics, and Other Ghosts.

Also, many of the poets I admire really lean into vulnerability. So in my attempt to continue pushing toward vulnerability myself, I want to share this poem that didn’t make the cut.

Read more

On August 31st, 2026, my debut poetry book Raíces, Relics, and Other Ghosts marked 3 years since getting its spine.

In honor of my book’s 3rd birthday, I don’t want to do a bookish giveaway or share book reviews or anything else I’ve tried in the past couple of years.

Instead, I want to offer a letter to my debut self. My 3-years-ago self. To anyone who is getting ready for the vulnerable work of letting your art leave you. Transform you. Undo you.

Whether you’re getting ready to publish a book, preparing to fill a blank page with a new project, or just telling someone about an idea you have to create something new—may you find resonance in this letter.

Dear S:

I won’t tell you how many people will say poetry doesn’t sell.

I won’t tell you that book launches can be more like book nudges.

I won’t tell you who ignores your messages.

And I also won’t tell you who reads your book before bed and feels less lonely.

I won’t tell you which poems call to your readers, and how those poems aren’t the ones you thought they’d be.

I won’t tell you about the young woman who drove over an hour to hear you read because she loved a poem of yours she found online.

I won’t tell you that you’re someone’s favorite poet.

I won’t tell you success doesn’t heal you.

And I certainly won’t tell you how some griefs stay festering while others become a doorway.

I won’t tell you how your book has visited the Seattle Airport, indie bookstores in Texas, Baltimore bars, a friend’s beloved home in Hong Kong, and monastic ruins in Ireland.

I won’t tell you how your book travels without you.

How it makes people feel seen even in your absence.

I won’t tell you that once your book is in the world, it’s no longer yours alone.

I won’t tell you which roots you’ll continue to grow and which relics you’ll have to lay down.

I won’t tell you which of your ghosts will haunt you off the page, even after you wrote into resolution.

And I won’t tell you which ghosts will follow you into your future books.

I won’t tell you what breaks up, breaks open, or breaks out.

I won’t tell you how, despite your stature, you finally refused to make yourself small for others.

I won’t tell you that sometimes you choose play and voice over the fear of what happens after.

I won’t tell you who you’ll become because, honestly, you wouldn’t believe me if I tried.

I won’t tell you because you’ll just have to wait and see it for yourself.

Here's the official book description: “Kelli Russell Agodon's latest collection, Accidental Devotions, seeks to find meaning in a world lit by screens and haunted by ghosts—both real and digital. Blending humor with vulnerability, these poems embrace the beautiful chaos of our relationships, of aging and being human. Here, explorations of desire, technology, and spirituality ring out like birdsong through a chapel. Sharp and playful, Accidental Devotions is for the quiet rebels and devoted readers—for those who carry ashes to the beach, ask Alexa for guidance, keep Emily Dickinson's book on the nightstand, or fall in love mid-sentence. With queer tenderness, and an ongoing devotion to desire, these poems make room for grief and joy, pleasure and struggle. The result: a dazzling, defiant field guide to staying human.”

This is a collection I return to again and again, and one I'll continue visiting as I grow more in my writing practice. There's so much to learn by reading Kelli’s work (and also she's an excellent workshop facilitator, so take a class with her if you see one), so I hope you find yourself coming back to this poem too!

The poem I'm sharing today is titled “Thirty-One Percent of US Adults Say They Are" ‘Almost Constantly’ Online While Sixty-One Percent of Americans Report Significant Feelings of Loneliness”

Your writing prompt can be used in any genre or for journaling! And it's at the end of the video, so hit that play button!

***I misread the word “constantly” as “consistently” at the end of the video because I am a human and make mistakes. Thanks for watching anyway 😅

The grief of oppression, war, migration, and diaspora is in a whole category of its own, especially with how these complex traumatic experiences intertwine with womanhood and personhood.

In Leila Farjami’s debut poetry collection Daughter of Salt, the speaker navigates these griefs with a light cast upon them. The speaker of these poems bear witness to these griefs even when distancing the self from them would be easier. Through fragmented syntax and intricate motifs used throughout the collection, Farjami creates a sort of personal mythology to memorialize a version of Iran that no longer exists, a matriarchal lineage no longer earthside, and a self both honored and reconstructed in perpetuity.

I was instantly captivated by Farjami’s syntax, how she balances or purposely throws off balance the complete with the incomplete. One poem where this balance is, in my mind, craft perfection is in “Daughter of Salt: Wound,” where the speaker begins the poem with fragments without a complete sentence until the 2nd stanza:

“Mother Wound—

Ancestor of the undersea volcano,

black island ringed in light.

We are women of the first ocean,

burned away,” (pg 12, lns 1-5).

This poem starts with an interruption, an em dash instead of the start of a predicate like “is the” or “forms from,” and reverberates with incomplete thoughts until the strong declaration of who this speaker is aligned with. Several lines of sentence fragments follow, allowing the reader to be fully immersed in this sea of phrasal shards. That is, until the complete sentences, questions, come back to drive the emotional nail through the board of the poem:

“Mother Wound—

why do we cluster under your eyes,

carve marks

on your cheeks,

eat through your body?

Why are we salt when all you need

is honey

is lint?” (pg 12, lns 1-5).

Because the poem is predominantly sentence fragments, these full sentences stand out more. They linger with us longer: like yes, why are these women salt when raw salt is the last thing a wound needs? Why do women need to be honey? Why do women need lint? Furthermore, when someone exists with such gaping wounds—wars, violence, patriarchy, death—I simply can’t imagine a collection where the poet doesn’t lean into the fragments, the shards, the broken parts of us that shake around as we walk this earth.

Another aspect of Farjami’s debut that I found just mesmerizing is her use of motif (a repeating idea, image, sound, or action in a piece). And not just one instance repeated throughout the book, but several weaving through each poem to knit what feels like a shawl of grief’s intersectionality.

From cover to cover, the speaker describes their aches as salt, sugar/honey, sea, fire, birds/wings, blades, and ghosts, just to name a few.

Y’all know I’m a parrot mom, so I’m going to share some excerpts from the bird motifs.

One of the early instances of this motif is more of the action than the word itself:

“I remember our last goodbye

at Tehran airport. Her arms

tight around me, as if one of us

were fleeing a cage,

flying open-winged—” (from “Longer Than Heartbreak,” lns 12-16).

This instance of the motif is effective in its common symbolism of a bird, as freedom or captivity in relation to the cage, but then by adding “as if one of us,” Farjami creates tension. Usually, the “bird” leaving is the one fleeing the cage, which would be the speaker in this case. But because we learn toward the beginning of the poem that the speaker lost her aunt to breast cancer not long after leaving Iran, the reader realizes who is actually the one fleeing. Or more so, that leaving can mean a beginning or an end.

From here, the bird/wing motif continues, yet it doesn’t in quite the same way. Farjami’s motifs feel different across poems while still adding a sense of unity to the collection, which is something I really admire about her work.

Just a couple pages later, the poem “Daughter of Salt: Dakhil” charges into the bird motif with a factual statement that reads more like a warning: “When you turned your back to me, / it meant a bird had died. // I thought you were next. Too brittle for the wind,” (pg 22, lns 1-3). In the previous poem, fleeing from a cage could be death, and in this one, death means never taking flight at all.

Later in the book, the poem “Without Her Spoon” declares, “When my mother’s thyroid bulged like a drowned bird, I blamed / Khanjoon’s cooking—her knack for shoving surrender / down our throats,” (pg 43, lns 10-12), adding yet another interesting (and devastating) angle to the bird motif. Here, the bird is still relating to death, but this time, the bird tried to swim and couldn’t, surrendering like what a loving grandmother tried to spoon to her loved ones. Like how we are all trying to heal from our ghosts, knowing that, in one form or another, they always come back to haunt us whether as an unhealthy habit/pattern, an ailment, or what feels like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

When we experience and/or bear witness to trauma, there are birds everywhere—flying, grounded, drowned.

The birds alone are a poem. Imagine all the different layers you can experience through the other motifs if you pick up the book and bear witness for yourself.

Daughter of Salt by Leila Farjami creates a memorial of ancestral homeland, new home, matriarchal lineage, womanhood, language, death, healing/unlearning, and selfhood in a way that bears witness to the horrors war and violence bring while still finding moments of pause and beauty. Farjami allows us to bear witness to this all by experiencing her fragmented syntax and intricate motifs. The horrors of the world persist, and may we be as courageous as the speaker of these poems. To not turn away. May we be “someone [who] must write / how we claw / the earth. Pluck scabs. / Never bleed,” (pg 36, lns 24-27).

Get your copy of Daughter of Salt by Leila Farjami from Trio House Press or from my Bookshop.org Storefront.

You can also follow Leila’s writing journey on her website:

https://www.leilafarjami.com/about

You can follow her Substack: https://substack.com/@leilafarjami

And you can follow her on Instagram @leila_poetry

What have you been bearing witness to lately? What do you refuse to look away from? Share in the comments.

Took up running. For evading mosquitoes, not cardio.

Learned how to use setting powder on my concealer

on my increasingly creased undereyes.

Celebrated America’s Independence Day by eating a croissant in Canada.

Read a new book until after midnight—

like I did when I was a kid and didn’t have to work at 8 AM the next day.

Grew my first snap pea, cucumber, blueberry, and heirloom tomato.

Canned 5 jars of salsa when more heirlooms blushed.

Found figures in the clouds with Grandma from the comfort of the porch swing.

Enjoyed a cup of coffee with Grandpa while he finished his puzzle in the newspaper.

Grabbed love by the hands, trusting its lead in a lifelong rumba.

Thought about the bones of relationships—

how they withstand, break, mend.

About how, despite everything, I’ve never broken a bone.

Journaled about bones. Journaled each night as if visiting

an old friend I hadn’t seen for years.

Because the woman I used to be is only a woman

I visit from time to time. Because the woman in the mirror

is that past woman if she’d been loved right—loved sooner.

What “poems” did you write this summer? What ones are you thinking about drafting now? Tell me in the comments!

Thank you for sticking with me for a year of Echoes & Ink! I appreciate you reading, interacting with, and sharing my work as I grow as a writer.

This time last year, I took some time off from my Substack to focus on some big life changes (presenting my thesis and getting my MFA). This year, I happen to have some more big life changes where I’ll need to press pause on my posting.

I will be back to posting weekly starting on August 20th!

Thank you for your kindness as I take this break. I’m excited to get back to it when I have greater capacity to connect.

Con amor,

S. Salazar

But also! If you haven’t read gorgeously curated interview of me, please check it out:

Cathy Ferrell

Writing Through Ghosts, Diaspora, and Inheritance

Some writing friendships begin in workshops, others through MFA classes or local writing groups. My friendship with poet S. Salazar began through the Tupelo Press 30/30 Project, a monthly writing marathon and online fundraiser where cohorts of volunteer poets commit to writing one poem a day for 30 days. S. and I quickly discovered we had much more in c…

Read more

3 months ago · 5 likes · ferrellwords and S. Salazar

Cathy is doing a book launch campaign for her debut chapbook with Kelsay Books, and I think she’s doing great literary citizenship by highlighting other poets while sharing about her work!

And now, for my post from the archives:

I’ve been writing poetry on and off since the 7th grade. After high school, I almost completely stopped writing because I started college and focused on “something that would make me money.”

I went into K-12 teaching, and that same year, the pandemic began. I was already struggling as a first-year teacher who couldn’t manage her in-person students. Now, I had to manage them online after an abrupt school closure. Turns out, that wouldn’t be an issue because many of them just didn’t show up.

Even though my students threw classroom challenges at me, I missed their daily sass, good sense of humor, and hope for the world. My relationship with my partner at that time was falling apart too, and our being in two separate rooms working remotely compounded the isolation I felt at the time.

This is when I returned to poetry. To reading. To embracing the troubling things I felt instead of just masking them for the sake of making everyone else feel more comfortable. I wrote my first poem in almost a decade, titled “Isolation,” really personifying the farm fields surrounding my apartment complex with loneliness.

From that point, I was hooked. I knew I needed to keep writing, and I knew that I needed a project that had nothing to do with the then-mysterious virus upending our lives. I leaned into that feeling of loneliness, reflecting deeply on myself and my life experiences to look for gaps I can analyze and attempt to mend.

That’s when I thought of it: the wedding photo, my dad’s parents (mis abuelos) I never knew, the whole half of my identity that’s a question mark.

Cultivating the Project

When I started writing Raíces, Relics, and Other Ghosts, I mostly leaned into trying to build relationships with my estranged family members, asking them about mis abuelos and about our story. I also did genealogy research. I was expecting to find answers to my questions and write a compelling “story arch” for my poetry collection that finally felt triumphant.

Instead I found:

• Dead ends.

• False documents.

• Fabled artifacts.

• “I don’t remember.”

• “Don’t ask me that again.”

• "I don’t know; I never asked.”

Door after door after door slammed in front of me, and it didn’t take me long to realize I had maybe 10 poems worth of writing from all the searching I’d done.

I had a choice to

either re-sculpt this into a chapbook, or soul search again and figure out what I really wanted from writing this book. Were answers really all I was looking for? Or was there something deeper to this project’s pull?

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Planting Seeds

I re-read what I had and realized the poems all felt like I was watching a sepia video. It felt so far away, and it felt intangible. The poems were only in the past tense, a place I’ve never lived and a place where my words can’t reach anything.

I needed the now. I needed the someday, hopefully soon. I needed the for my future children.

With this, I believed I could still write a full-length collection, but I needed to get more organized because the focus wasn’t just on the past anymore.

I decided putting section dividers in my collection would help me organize my ideas and conceptualize this idea of growth. Section one is the feeling of confusion, loss, etc. Section two is my tangible learning and hitting the dead ends. Section three is realizations, and thinking about the present and future tense of my familia’s story.

Once I clarified this structure, I still felt the collection needed another binding agent. Something to increase the imagery and sentimentality, which is hard to have without having actually shared moments with mis abuelos and familia I’d never met. So I began writing persona poems where I imagined moments with mis abuelos or moments where I found the answers I was seeking.

I also dug my heels into what I can do, now, in real time, to preserve my heritage (what’s left of it) for the future. I brushed off my dusty Spanish textbooks and downloaded language apps. I had phone calls with my tia as she walked me through how to make Puerto Rican dishes. I started forming relationships with my family because I liked them, they’re cool, and I wanted to know them!

All of these things created energy for me, whereas before, this quest felt draining and like a series of “nope.”

This energy sparked play, something I’m learning to do better each day I’m alive. When I learned a new word or cultural concept, I analyzed various connotations and denotations to flip the concept on its head or to add more layers to it. I switched from English to Spanish when the choice increased reader impact or poetic musicality. I explored poetry craft terms as I learned them: repetition, extended metaphor, motif, slant rhyme, etc.

Each poem was a new playground to learn from, and that really allowed me a full range of exploration for the collection.

However, I still needed to find a way to acknowledge the dead ends from before. To not acknowledge them is to reject parts of the grieving process that are necessary to heal into. Also, books that are “and they lived happily ever after and no part of the story was ever sad again” is false, simple, and not a how I wanted my collection to end.

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Nurturing Sprout and Grown Plant

Part of the process of bringing my familia and my heritage into the present tense was learning to accept what I had control over in this story and what I didn’t. I wrote poems about what was lost, what was found, what was reimagined. Not wanting or yearning for it to be different. I think this final section of the book really leans into disenfranchised grief; the grief cycle ends with acceptance, and I believe that’s where I needed to land for the book too.

This allowed me to not just say “This is what I want latinidad to look like for me.” It’s also “This is what latinidad looks like for me, what being Norse and Puerto Rican looks like for me. How being intersectional in a country that likes the melting pot idea will look like for me.”

Acceptance is hard and uncomfortable, but it’s also freeing.

For my readers living in diaspora, this is the feeling I wanted to leave them with: “We are multitudes. We are all of this.”

Other Considerations:

The brainstorming and refining of ideas for the collection is a huge part of my process. But there are also logistics at play, I assure you.

For my writing process I:

• Went out in nature all the time. Hiking is something I really enjoy, and it grounds me. Also, this book has a lot of plant imagery, so that outdoor time was conducive to my ideas. When the outdoors wasn’t an option, I made sure to have plenty of plants on my desk to keep me rooted to my motif (all pun intended).

• Took online generative workshops by Latinx authors or those who wrote about ancestry/diaspora. This helped me find new view points or learn new aspects of poetic craft.

• Read poetry. A lot. I was particularly inspired by Karla Cordero’s How to Pull Apart the Earth and Ada Limon’s The Carrying.

• Read outside of the genre too. Reading YA influences my poetic voice because I think it gives me a fun balance between lyrical and zesty.

• Took part in an accountability and workshopping group through Alegria Publishing. Accountability partners and goals for weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly deadlines are helpful when working on a project. Otherwise, a project can just stay that and never see completion.

• Did not write daily. Not as a teacher during the pandemic. But honestly, I’m not a write each day kind of person anyway. Instead, I had set days (usually 3 times a week) that I would dedicate to my poetry. I had to write those days (unless there was an emergency or I was ill). That was my promise to myself, and it worked!

• Wrote at a time my writerly brain was on. As romantic as the 5 AM Writers Club sounds, I don’t vibe with mornings. The only things mornings have going for it are the bird sounds and fresh coffee. I’m a night owl, and even to my day job’s detriment, my best writing happens at night. I used this self awareness to form my writing habits.

• Created a writing ritual: I have a few playlists I generate writing to, ones I revise to, etc. I have a cute typewriter keyboard I use only when doing creative works. I have my fairy lights that I only turn on when I’m in “writer” mode. Once all these parts of my ritual are in place, I can turn off other modes of my brain and just create.

• Leaned into community. When writers block hit, I had a handful of folks I could turn to for a Zoom call or in-person meet where we could discuss our blocks or project’s sticky points. Verbal processing, for me, usually inspires an un-sticking. Even for my current projects, these folks are instrumental to my being an author. And our continued work together allows our work to make their way to the readers who need them.

My writer friends, my nonwriter friends (I have some engineers and accountants who offer some pretty poetic perspectives, y’all), my familia, my readers—mi comunidad is everything to me, and my process would be nothing without them.

What other questions about my writing process do you have? Drop them in the comments!

S: Ivy, thank you so much for joining me on my Afterwords series this week. To kick us off, would you please provide a brief overview of your book and its themes to my subscribers?

Ivy: Thank you for having me! I’m so excited to share more about If I Love You with your subscribers.

A central pillar of the collection is unraveling family structures. The poems expose gaslighting, conditional loyalty, and a haunting, toxic inheritance passed down through generations of women. The book tackles the predatory nature of “kindness,” and the emotional aftermath of violation. There is a gritty exploration of using recklessness and dissociation as armor against past trauma. The collection details the exhausting daily maintenance of living with trauma and anxiety. The overarching theme of the book is stubborn, defiant survival.

S: Defiant survival feels like…exactly what a lot of us need to name this ache inside of us. This idea of toxic inheritances is a form of grief I love sharing on my Substack because I don’t think it gets highlighted often enough. Thank you for your courage in sharing your story in this way. Although a lot of your book is memoir-like in some ways, I’m wondering about your poetic inspirations for this book. What books inspired you as you wrote? Or which spoken word artists inspired you?

Ivy: I love to share and build community, so absolutely happy to highlight my story! To answer your question though, most of this collection was written before I started to explore poetry seriously. It’s primarily my diary. I think the oldest poem in the collection is “Little Miss Perfect”, and you can really see the difference between that and the poems in the last chapter that I wrote more recently.

I have been inspired by a lot of poets, though, since committing to poetry: I love how Kim Addonizio always leans into the “unpretty” emotions, and Sharon Olds’s use of plain, direct, language to deliver devastating truths about family trauma. I also love how Ada Limón writes about the quiet anchors that save us from our personal chaos, and of course Sylvia Plath’s use of domestic imagery and existential rage to transform familial betrayal into personal mythology.

S: I could absolutely feel the changes your poetry embodies through your collection. Since we’re talking about change and growth in your poetry, I’m wondering about what came up as you wrote that caused you to experience some growing pains. Which sections/poems challenged you the most, and which ones came to you with ease?

Ivy: The first two chapters are really hard for me. Raw is about being taken prematurely, and not being able to trust your protectors. Ripe gets more into detail about the distance that grows between the body and the self after abuse. The rest of the book lives more in my coping mechanisms, but reading those first two chapters always forces me to remember the truth, and the importance of maintaining all that I’ve built since then: love, family, a stable home. For the most part writing the poems comes easily to me; I’m just venting.

The one poem that was hardest to write, though, was “Love, Mom.” It’s the last letter my mom wrote me, and it was so cruel I never wanted to forget that it was really said. I forced myself to make it into a poem to help me stay away from her. It’s hard sometimes. I love her, but I don’t think there’s any coming back from that, and my life has been truly wonderful since that decision.

S: I’m glad to hear that you’ve found healing in your life from this separation, even though it’s painful. Often, I think we are more surprised by the healing we find within pain compared to the pain we know we’re going to feel, you know? While you were writing, what surprised you the most? About the process or the way the book was taking shape? Something else?

Ivy: I was initially surprised to see so many recurring images and tropes (flowers, growth, rotting fruit). It wasn’t planned, but I adhere to psychoanalytical literary theory and view all my work through that lens. I hardly ever edit my work, which I know would elevate the quality, because I like how genuine it is in capturing that specific moment. For that same reason, I can’t take notes on a poem idea to come back to later. It either flows from me immediately in the moment or it passes forever. While I admire the craft of poetry, for me it’s primarily art therapy. Looking back at my healing journey through my poetry, I can see where the recurring themes start to die off, and where I’m reminded of them later on, in smaller ways. It really mirrors PTSD: it never really goes away, but you get a better handle on it over time.

S: I think poetry has many aspects of art therapy to it, in the very least that it is a written artform to experiment with, to play with even, to see how to best capture a specific moment. I’m glad you’ve found so much benefit from writing poetry and now want to share it with others. While you’ve already touched on this a bit in your previous answer, how else has writing your book helped in your own personal grief/healing journey?

Ivy: I’m learning this week that I’m still in the process. I write the poem and let the feeling go, but if I don’t reread what I wrote ever, then I don’t really process that feeling. I’ve been performing some of my older poems for the first time, and while I’d love to say that I’m past all this, the performances have been giving me panic attacks. I don’t like to let those things control me though; I feel like that’s how my abusers win. I’ll always do the difficult thing, sometimes when I don’t need to, mostly to prove to myself that I can. Writing If I Love You was cathartic in its own right, but this tour is the next step in my trauma healing, and it relies heavily on exposure therapy. Luckily, these crowds are the kindest and most supportive people in the world, and I’m always met off stage with hugs.

S: It’s funny you bring up the idea of your audiences being so kind, because that ties directly into my next question! If readers/audiences could only take away one thing from your book, what do you hope they carry with them?

Ivy: I’m going to emphasize this here: survival is an act of defiance.

While you can’t choose the family or the trauma you inherit, you can choose what you build out of the wreckage. Softness, joy, and love don’t have to mean submission; they can be maintained out of spite against a world that wants to harden you. My rage has been harnessed to give me a beautiful life full of the kindness and love I doubted existed. When men shout at me on the street and my body tightens up, I let the fear wash over me, let it turn to anger, and direct that energy toward using my mindfulness tools and focusing my emotions in healthy and productive ways that get me closer to my goals. It’s never easy, but it is possible.

S: It’s never easy, but it’s possible! I’ll snap snap for that! As a closing question, where can readers buy your book and connect with you more after they read this interview?

Ivy: Yes, please connect with me! My book If I Love You is available online at SeedBedPress.org, and you can order the book with the exclusive giftset at my website IvyRozen.com. I’ll be on tour in the northeast through the end of July. My tour dates are also posted on my website.

S: Ivy, congratulations again on your full-length collection! I’ll be cheering you on as you do your book tour. And thanks again for joining me this week on Afterwords!

Ivy: Thank you for having me!

Usually, when I start an installment of The Healing shelf, I dive into the specific the choices that a poet has made that allows the work to best lean into the themes of healing and grief within the book.

I’m breaking that pattern a little bit today as I tell you about not just a collection of poems, but a gorgeous novel-in-verse: Calling Me Home by Laurin Becker Macios.

A novel-in-verse is both familiar and unique for readers—for poetry lovers, we find comfort in the line breaks, white space, and experimentation on the page, yet the linearity of plot and the inclusion of characters feel very much like prose. For readers of prose, the plot and characterization feel familiar, and the form of poetry is, well, uncomfortable sometimes. Novels-in-verse wrap all that discomfort and novelty into one book, and they are generally published as middle grade, young adult, and new adult fiction novels, so many adult audiences aren’t as aware of this genre-bending storytelling powerhouse.

I’m taking a moment to share this powerhouse genre with you now, because regardless of whether we’re 14 or 114, reading a novel, poem, or series of narrative poems surrounding the experiences of a fictional character, I believe we can all lean into the discomfort of genres outside of our general reading, and that that discomfort makes us stronger readers and writers.

Just our narrator, grows into a more complex and strong person who leans into the “in between” as she experiences grief in this coming-of-age story.

Jenny had an unrooted childhood, her parents moving from country to country, across oceans and languages, for work. Jenny never really called anywhere “home” until her parents bought a house in Colorado. As long as she can remember, Jenny has never done well with stillness, thus why she’s excited to start a career in marketing in the bustling city of New York after she graduates from NYU. That is, after her post-high school graduation trip that takes her backpacking across Europe. That is, unless her plans don’t go according to plan after all.

On her Europe trip, Jenny meets many phenomenal people, but she is particularly fond of Colin, an employee at a hostel she stays at. They spend a week together in Rome, which she feels is like a dream, until their final night together ends in nonconsensual sex. Jenny returns to the U.S. with a pregnancy, and the complex grief she felt about her last night with Colin morphs into a whole new form of grief she isn’t convinced she can overcome. All of her planning to put down roots has taken a whole new meaning.

The events taking place in this book feel like a young adult fiction novel—enduring break ups, drinking at parties, contemplating what to do after high school, changing friendships—but how these stories unfold outside of prose does something spectacular with the themes of grief Jenny tackles.

Something that poetry does that prose often doesn’t is rebel against neat endings. Poems end with an emotion, an image, a question, which just lands different from the ways prose tries to do this (i.e. cliffhangers or leaps in time).

One example of a poem I love that really showcases this is “Never Had I Ever:”

had a nickname

till I became

his Little J.

I felt adored,

inevitably his,

the way

a river might feel

in the rain.

The idea of a teen reminiscing on a nickname, and how this poem follows the other poems outlining the plot of Colin taking Jenny on adventures through Rome to show their developing relationship, feels very prose in nature. The syntax of the lines feels narrative, without jumps or fragments that are more standard to poetry. This creates familiarity and comfort for the reader, as does the nod to the adolescent game “never have I ever.” The poetic part arrives at the end, where the “event” of the poem ends on an abstraction, and it ends on an abstraction that creates more questions than answers (which great poems tend to do): Does the speaker of the poem imagine the river embraces the rain like a hug? Does the river feel pelted by the rain? Does the river know it’s absorbing the rain so the droplets lose their identity?

This is what’s beautiful about a novel-in-verse. The discomfort of unclear endings, of lineation (aka deliberate brokenness), of figurative language sometimes saying more than the events within the text do—it adds something to the plot and characterization of prose that prose can’t often achieve. Yet the narrative nature of this novel allows readers to stay tethered to the challenging feelings they’re experiencing through the text.

Young folks are not immune from experiencing grief, and I love how approachable this book is for adolescents while still maintaining its vulnerability. The book doesn’t shy away from tough social issues or complex situations.

Jenny has to choose between the future she carved out for herself and the life a future infant would carve out for her. She ultimately chooses to end the pregnancy, but losing the opportunity to know, raise, and love a child comes with its own form of (disenfranchised) grief. This, on top of her grief of never knowing a true home, are complex emotional experiences for anyone to process.

By leaning into figurative language, image, fragmentation, and abstraction, this creates a sense of discomfort for the reader so they can feel what the speaker Jenny feels without ever having to experience it themselves. And these griefs (among others) will never truly end; they just change over time. Poetry is a particularly effective container for this sort of over-but-never-really-over feeling.

When we get to the book’s end, we don’t get offered a neat “this is the end of the story” feeling like we do with many novels. Instead we’re offered the poem “Here, Home, I.” A reminder of the enduring ache of memory through abstraction:

“I pocket small reminders.

My favorite: a quarter-sized

scallop shell, dove gray—

dappled as a memory.”

Grief isn’t exclusive to any age group or life experience, and because of books like Calling Me Home, everyone can experience complex feelings of grief while enjoying the best parts of both poetry and prose together. And for young folks in particular, it gives those who feel lost a place to feel understood. Or for some folks not so young, we hold a book in our hands that acts as a mirror, our younger selves looking back at us while we tell them “I see you. I see you here.”

Intrigued? Moved? Get your copy of Calling Me Home by Laurin Becker Macios from Penguin Random House or from my Bookshop.org Storefront.

You can also follow Laurin’s writing journey on her website:

https://www.laurinbeckermacios.com/

When do you find poetry moves you best? When do you find that you’re most influenced by prose? Share in the comments.

One way she does this is through breaking the rules of time and space in a poem. I suppose it's not a “rule rule,” but many aspiring poets are told to focus on a moment or two for narrative poems as to not overload a poem. Michele finds some of the most compelling poems refuse to limit the speaker to one person or event or time. Because we don't often experience the world through singularities. And we certainly don't grieve that way. When we lose something, or anticipate losing it, we experience many micro losses at once--a laugh, a morning cup of tea places in the hand, the inside joke only they know--

And the way in which we're moved by those losses changes throughout our lives too. In that way, grief is a body, its cellular structure aging as the wounds do.

So, in honor of Michele's beautiful new book Don't Ask Me How I Know, I invite you to write about the anatomy of grief. Where do you feel grief in your body? Or is it felt in a place or a word that feels like a body? Or is simply the mention of some place on the body enough to get us reflecting like the grandmother’s teeth in Michele’s poem “The River Barrow?”

You tell me. Drop in the comments where this exploration took you!

And be sure to follow Michele's work on her Facebook and Instagram (under her name) and to find her book at MoonPath Press.

You'll have to listen (and eventually see how these poems appear on the page) for yourself!

-S.

S: Thank you for joining me today, Amanda. To start, would you please share a brief summary about the book for my subscribers who may not be familiar with the project?

Amanda: Yes, of course. My favorite description of this project is “Edited by Amanda Johnston, the 61st Texas Poet Laureate and first Black woman to receive this honor, this vibrant anthology collects the work of 70 emerging and established poets across the state. Commissioned to write original poems celebrating everyday people, the poets in Praisesong for the People: Poems from the Heart and Soul of Texas are as diverse as the landscapes they inhabit, and reflect the intersecting identities of Texas’s population across age, gender, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, disability, and immigrant communities. In these poems, their voices gather in a heartfelt chorus to praise the people in their communities who offer small kindnesses, asking nothing in return.

Praise the bus driver who ferries us safely across town. Praise the abuela who dries our tears. Praise the librarian who protects young curiosity. Praise the therapist with an open door, the teacher fluent in the language of affirmation. With story, testimony, and song, these poets give our unsung community heroes their flowers.”

S: I love this idea of praise and celebration despite all the challenges the world is facing. I’d love to hear more about the “spark” for this anthology. What was it?

Amanda: As Texas Poet Laureate, I wanted to do something that celebrated the diverse communities and poets across Texas. I also wanted to do something that created moments of joy and gratitude.

S: I found so many pockets of joy and gratitude in these poems, and it was so refreshing, especially with the darkness we’re feeling in 2026. In your opinion, what makes this year the right year to launch this work into the world?

Amanda: Gratitude and praise are always needed and right on time. During these dark and challenging times, we must lean into the light so we can see each other, find joy, and remain clear about what we want to see in the world. This collection is a guide to the light.

S: I love that—“This collection is a guide to the light.” As a poet laureate, you’re also serving as a guide to steward poetry into the community at large. How did your poet laureate’s work inform your approach to this project?

Amanda: I believe the role of a poet laureate is to amplify poetry and poets and be in service to the community. The project was in service to poets and the people. I hope it made a positive impact that will continue to reach people through the book.

S: I know this book is making an impact, and I’m so glad its light has reached me. Speaking of community, there are many voices, styles, and approaches to poems in this book, a perfect representation for the many communities that call Texas home. What did being an editor of this Anthology teach you about editing? What did it teach you about being a poet?

Amanda: We contain multitudes. Editing the anthology was a practice of trust more than anything else. The poets were commissioned to write the poems, and the only instructions they received were to write a praise poem for a person from their community. The poems that came back from these incredible poets were exactly what they needed to write and what we needed to receive and share. Trust the process. Trust the poets.

S: I love this idea of trusting the process and trusting the poets in this way. Many aspects of poetry are done on instinct, but sometimes event with good poetic intuition, we can’t predict where our work will take us. What is something that surprised you or challenged you while editing Praisesong?

Amanda: I knew that writing praise poems wouldn’t be easy. With people dealing with so much in their personal lives, and so many horrific things happening in the world, attempting to celebrate someone and express one’s gratitude can be a heavy lift. I wasn’t surprised then when some of the poets invited to the project declined, but the poets who said yes showed the many ways into the light and how praise and gratitude can be shared in unexpected ways for people we often take for granted.

S: Back to that point of trust, it sounds like the poets who were meant to cast light were able to, and readers in 2026 are in need of that light. I’d love to hear your thought on this: if a reader could only take away one thing after reading this book, what would you hope it would be?

Amanda: Good people are still in the world. Be one of them, and do good things for others.

S: Yes, yes yes! To close us out, where can people go to learn more about your work, about Praisesong, and about the poets featured in this project?

Amanda: You can buy Praisesong for the People: Poems from the Heart and Soul of Texas at Host Publications or Asterism. You can also learn more about the project at PraisesongforthePeople.com

Thank you S. for taking the time to interview me and for sharing Praisesong with your subscribers!

S: Thank you so much for sharing your experiences as editor and for your perspective on casting light during dark times. If you missed last week’s post, I read two of my favorite poems from Praisesong, which gives you a good idea of some of the joy and positivity radiating through the book!

If you’ve read Praisesong, what were your favorite poems?

What praisesong are you striving to write right now?

Next week, on my Afterwords interview series on Substack, I’m going to do a deep dive of Praisesong for the People with editor Amanda Johnston, who also served as the 61st Texas Poet Laureate and was the first Black woman to receive this honor. This collection features 70 poets from across Texas, emerging and established, from all walks of life, who write poems about everyday Texans.

To kick off the love I have for this book, I’m sharing two poems that moved me. The first poem I read is “Tenor and Vehicle” by Jenny Browne and the second poem is “Revolutionary Letter” by Claire Bowman.

Browne’s poem turns a “micro moment” into a bigger, more existential one, and I really love when a poet can do that. She also does so in a way that leaps an with a voice that’s vulnerable. With Bowman’s poem, I love the declarative sound of it, as well as the specificity of the everyday folks who are creating revolution in their own ways. Even though I’ve never met Bianca or a Barton Salamander, I feel like I know them. Because we’re all more connected than we may initially think.

These poems both hit at the heart of Praisesong, and they do so with deliberate, stunning craft choices.

If you loves these poems, you’ll love the many more that are published in the book. To read them, be sure to order the book from Host Publications: https://hostpublications.com/collections/new-arrivals/products/praisesong-for-the-people-poems-from-the-heart-and-soul-of-texas

What were your favorite lines/movements within these poems?

Last year around this time, I wanted a space to show up consistently as an author besides at the desk and chair. While I want to be consistent on social media channels too, I am one woman with a day job, a busy family life, and a chatty parrot.

I can’t show up consistently everywhere.

So, in line with my relaunch campaign of Raíces, Relics, and Other Ghosts, I decided that I would consistently show up on Substack once a week and really dedicate some time to building this platform into something my Wordpress newsletter was not able to achieve.

Here’s what I’ve learned in a year of consistency.

Being Reliable:

Each week aside from pre-announced breaks (like Christmas and my thesis defense), I published something every week. Sometimes its a review, others it’s an interview, and yet others are a deep dive into my process as a writer or an exclusive paid subscriber goodie.

Regardless of what I posted, I was reliable. I set a goal and I had to meet it. I still do.

This shows me that, when I have more “hours in a day,” like on a weekend I don’t have to plan something, an evening without compromising sleep, or a work day where I can work a little less, that I can make time to be more consistent with getting words on the page, sending queries/submissions, or creating a social media strategy.

I love knowing I can show up and be a reliable presence for readers and other authors, at least, I can when I’m not having to compromise on life things (bills, family time, etc.).

Being a Literary Citizen:

I learned this term at AWP 2025. To be a literary citizen is to be someone in the writing community that gives back in some way, with or without something in return. One aspect of Echoes & Ink that I’ve loved and didn’t expect to take off so quickly is the relationships I’ve built with authors and their books through my Healing Shelf and Afterwords series. I read gorgeous books, gush about them and the authors behind the works, and I get to make new writerly connections?

I love that. And I didn’t have to pay to go to a conference or fly to a workshop to make connections happen. Through video calls, emails, and social media, along with my interpretation of the work, I learned to be a better literary citizen. It’s one of my favorite things I do now.

Being Vulnerable:

I’ve had some real-life examples of where my vulnerability was not accepted or used with kindness. Sometimes, my openness has been weaponized or made a reason as to why some part of me was fundamentally broken.

Through Substack, I learned that those examples were not a me problem. Those were some wound in another person that festered at my personhood, for one reason or another. So when I showed up each week to post, I remembered that my personhood, my why for writing, coaching, and collaborating.

It was so healing for me, and now, I’ve learned how to lean into this vulnerability in social media as well, and most importantly, in my writing.

My poetry doesn’t skim around the edges of a thing anymore. My prose doesn’t bury an admission in lengthy, flowered sentences. My words can dive in now. And it feel so, so good.

The Stats:

Some folks really love to hear the personal, qualitative data like what I’ve shared above. For you quantitative thinkers, here’s the stats:

At this time last year, without consistency or a plan, I:

• Published Substack content maybe once a quarter.

• Had 38 followers (because they are automatically followers if they subscribe).

• Had 38 subscribers.

• Didn’t have a purpose for publishing on Substack outside of occasional updates on what I was doing (so essentially just a newsletter).

Now, after a year of consistency, I:

• Publish Substack content once a week (not including chats or Notes)

• Have 267 followers (WOW thank you <3) and use Notes as often as I remember, especially to share the work of others.

• Have 100 subscribers, including my first paid subscriber (YAY thank you <3)

• Have a purpose to share grief/healing/writing topics with readers and authors alike, ranging from the traditional to the ghostly, from poetry to kidlit. My work is defined by theme, not genre, which is more representative of my why anyway.

All of This to Say:

Thank you for being here. Thank you for supporting me and informing my growth as a writer, author, and human bean.

Your presence in my journey has helped me learn to be a better, more consistent person, and that’s something I really need at this stage.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. <3

What have you taken away from Echoes & Ink? Do you have a favorite post/topic/book I’ve shared so far? Something you’d like me to expand on? Talk to me in the comments!

P.S. If you find that you have any capacity to share my Substack, my book, or upgrade to a paid subscription, I would be over the moon. Your support means everything!