IT TAKES a lifetime to write a debut book. It is the sum of all that an author has read, learned, and experienced until that moment.
While working toward the completion of my debut poetry collection, , I searched deep within myself to understand my voice and my relation to literary craft. I read about anglophonic traditions in the United Kingdom and the United States. I read works in translation by authors from Korea to Iran. I read about the impact of revolutionary Soviet poets on revolutionary Salvadoran poets. I performed spoken word, and I taught my students about poets of oration during South Africa’s apartheid. I theorized with friends about mixed-media and Insta-poetry. To arrive at my first book, I took the long road to understanding that poetic craft changes depending on one’s language and relation to the nation-state. For me craft became a suggestion,
