Kinsale Drake Recommends...

During a recent in-person workshop, my writing mentor, Natalie Diaz, asked, “What or whom can you hold while experiencing or witnessing something difficult or tragic? What is the work that your poem wants to do, out there in the world?”

I usually write poems in bursts, with real or imagined deadlines in mind. My brain is forever a student with homework due. But recently I’ve written very little—a drought brought on by depression and the horror I’ve felt witnessing the atrocities in Palestine, Sudan, Congo. I would wake up every morning wondering what more I could do, feeling that writing was a selfish act.

I voiced this to Natalie and my peers during workshop. Some responded by saying we had to take care of each other and ourselves, because without care we have no power to do our best work in the world and show up for one other. Without each other, we are lost.

I keep a journal with me or a Post-it, a pen; I write on my forearm or my Notes app. I had trouble keeping a journal before, because I misplace things often, but I treat it as part of my job and writing process now. Throughout any given day, I scribble down as many thoughts and observations as possible. When I take walks, I am generous. I note the angle of the light. I write down a memory dredged up by music from a passing car. I remember a relative I should call. I let myself pay closer attention to the world—flowers, insects, clouds, my heartbeat, the wind. I am gentler with myself. And I try to remind myself that reading, too, is important work. Writing and reading are inextricable for me. In moments when I give myself room to breathe, the idea for a poem that feels right often peeks through, and I catch a glimpse of a brighter world.

—Kinsale Drake, author of The Sky Was Once a Dark Blanket
(University of Georgia Press, 2024)