Sarah Kay

Totally different era, if you will.

Different era, different everything.

And you write a lot of poems in 10 years.

And so when I started looking at...

all of those poems and with my amazing editor, Maya Millett, together we noticed this theme of a person

reaching for poetry to process whatever was happening at that moment in her life.

So this book ended up being sort of like a chronology of my reaching for poetry.

And the book is in three sections.

The first section shows me

the way that i reached for poetry as a young person moving out of childhood and specifically to help me process the introduction of violence into my consciousness and my life personal violence gendered violence systemic violence and then the second section is

using poetry to process falling in love and, spoiler alert, heartbreak, and also reaching and searching in the way that I did as a young person.

And then the third section of the book is a reflection of where I am now, which is reaching for poetry to help me process aging and mortality and the sort of newer moments

moments in which I reach for poetry.

And that became the project of the book.

And once I found that sort of spine, then I was able to see which of all these poems help show that chronology like little ticks on a timeline.

Oh, you know what's so funny?

I wouldn't.

I wouldn't say a single thing to her because the only reason it worked is that I knew absolutely nothing about what was going to happen.

I was so naive and I was so...

genuinely present and just happy to be there.