Jennifer Williams

They were all made up once upon a time.

Nobody had to make one.

Yes.

I think it's a poet's... I would say it's a poet's right.

If the word doesn't exist for the thing you're trying to talk about, go ahead and make it up.

You've talked already a bit about music and rhythm, and you are a musician as well, aren't you?

And do you feel also that there are...

do you find there's any crossover or insights that you have that go between those two artworks?

Because it's something about it being like a prayer, but also about a kind of summoning of your own destiny or trying to take control of a difficult situation and saying just like, here, come get me if this is my life.

And I don't know, it's very sort of devastating and powerful in that way.

you could see someone sort of standing on a mountaintop shouting it to the sky almost did you i mean you we talked a little bit about how your um in a way your rise to fame so to speak seem to be partly to do with this book and and it being not only amazing poems but also poems about your time

as a soldier but also that you were writing poems long before that and you're still writing poems and that that's not your only kind of identity as a poet but it uh but it I guess it is it's wonderful and interesting that you were able to put some of those experiences into words was that just a a natural response for you as a poet to that job that you had at that time yeah yeah

Do you have a feeling about that?

Should we have another poem?

Sure, sure.

Very haunting poem.

And I think that line about the explosion and the blast is really, really powerful.

But then also, again, there's this extraordinary mix of a feeling of sacredness alongside of violence and devastation.

Because that thing about, well, it is very biblical, isn't it?

The river and the Euphrates.