1. When did you start writing?
"my mother likes to say that i wrote & drew comic books when i was at a very young age. i don’t quite remember any of that & throughout the rest of my K–12 education, i struggled with reading & writing. so, in earnest, i started writing while i was in community college. i had taken a fiction writing class because i needed an English credit & had no idea what i wanted to do with my life. at the end of the course, i realized i needed to write. i liked it, but more so, i felt more complete. the next semester i 'transferred' into the AFA in Creative Writing program, took a poetry course & found that home."

2. Where do you draw inspiration? 
"for a long time, i had no inspiration. i wrote generic poetry. this, honestly, lasted until i got into my second semester of grad school, in conversation with my advisor, & i remember clearly him saying 'ok, but where is you in any of these poems? Where’s your connection? why do these topics matter to you?' i didn’t know. i clammed up. not a clue. i was nowhere. 

eventually, after months of thinking, i concluded that i needed to write about my relationship to gun violence, to masculinity, to brotherhood. so i began to write poems about that. 

currently, a lot of my inspiration comes from the examination of my mental health & queerness. mostly because they are, again, things that i feel the need to talk about, finally, but also they are topics that i’m struggling with in my everyday life, so they are always on my mind." 

3. Could you share your process and thoughts on writing?
"generally, i’ll think of an idea, or a line for a poem. that’s the seed. the biggest difference in my process that i’ve noticed from other writers that i share a space with is that i tend to write poems as a project first & foremost. with my first book, loudest when startled, as well as my second manuscript, i only wrote poems that relate to each other. i have hundreds of poems about gun violence, about my brother, about my family, etc., & during the years that i worked on that first book, i maybe wrote half a dozen poems that did not relate to those topics. same goes for my second manuscript. 

i feel like i get locked on & just can’t break free of that obsession until it’s 'complete.' though, your obsessions are never truly gone. i still write poems that could easily fit right into the first book. it’ll always be there.& i think finding & recognizing those obsessions is such an important step in my writing process that it’ll probably be how i write for my entire life. i just can’t comprehend not having a focus. not having something to say that i’m writing towards."

4. What is your method of writing? Notebooks, computer?
"i mainly write sporadically on my phone or tablet, then let it sit. after a while, i’ll return to it on my desktop computer & flesh it out. i have notebooks on my desk in case i need to use them, but i’ve used the same notebook for a few years now & it’s still full of empty pages!"
 
5. How did loudest when startled come about? When did you realize you had material for a poetry book? 
"loudest when startled started out as my grad school thesis. it was more bare bones at that point but had the same core of poems. & it frightened me. the subject material was, & still, terrifying for me to write about. it felt important though. it felt like a space that hadn’t been talked about in poetry. there are many writers that have touched upon gun violence in their work, but none seemed to take the same angle that eventually unearthed in loudest when startled. 

so, i think after completing my thesis, i had this interesting idea for a project. from there, i began to add more to the poems that tie the whole thing together, such as 'without firearms,' or 'this poem is not about a bullet.' that last section needed to most added to it. i needed to understand the poems better. i needed to let them work through me. i was pushing a certain narrative, you know gun = bad, but that wasn’t the only thing the collection wanted to be about. after realizing that i wasn’t writing this grand anti-gun treatise, i was able to really see the poems for what they were; empathetic, understanding, desiring, & most importantly, layered. & shout-out to the editors at YesYes for allowing my book to grow even after they had picked it up for publication. their input made it immensely closer to what it needed to be."

6. How do you know when a poem is done?
"i don’t? no, i don’t know. it’s hard. a feeling, i guess. a feeling of completeness. if i’ve come back to a poem several times & leave it thinking 'i don’t see anything else that i can add.' this is definitely something i’m still learning about." 

7. What do you hope people take away from your work? 
"i hope people take away anything from my writing. frustration, fear, joy, sadness, stress, etc. i don’t hope to change peoples’ minds, or teach them, or show them how hard life can be. i just hope they felt something. that they came away from it with something new etched in their soul. small or large. a word. a line. a poem. the whole book."

8. What project(s) do you hope to take on?
"well, i’m working on two different poetry projects right now, as well as a novel-in-verse. the older poetry project & the novel-in-verse center around health anxiety while the newer poetry project touches on queerness. i have a few idea for more prose projects. ideally, & i know i joke about this on twitter all the time, but i really want to write about bigfoot. i’m not sure what yet, but i feel like that’s one of my writing goals for life."

9. What writing advice do you find totally useless?
"i despise the whole 'write what you know' advice.  there’s so much i don’t know. in loudest when startled, there’s so many poems that have experiences that i did not have. that book would not have been written if i stuck to that advice, & i do get that advice several times, especially during my education. 

i think that piece of advice misleads the readers to believe that everything that happens is true, that i was the 'i' in my poems. i can’t tell you how many times people have messaged me like… apologizing for what the brother character does in my book when those incidents never happened. now, i’m not saying that there isn’t truth in my poems, but my real brother had never gone on a mass shooting, or explicitly told me to buy a gun after i talked to him about suicidal ideation." 
 
10. And finally, what do you enjoy doing that you don’t talk about enough. Tell me all about it!
"oh gosh, i feel like i keep about my passions hidden from social media. i tend to talk about writing exclusively. it’s semi-conscious. though, i’ve been letting more things slip as my audience grows. i’m a big fan of manga, not so much anime, but if the cross section of poetry & anime twitter want to adopt me, please! drawing is incredibly relaxing. i’m a sports-person. unfortunately, i live in Minnesota so our sports teams are not known for winning. i hang out with my pets pretty much 24/7 now. as i’m writing this, my dog is lying to the side of my chair on a blanket, waiting for me to finish & go cuddle him, so you know." 


Hear lukas ray hall read their poem "summer."

lukas ray hall is a queer non-binary poet. they are the author of loudest when startled (YesYes Books, 2020). their poems have appeared in The Florida Review, Moon City Review, Atlanta Review & Raleigh Review, among others. they live in St. Paul, MN. for more information, visit their website: www.lukasrayhall.com. 

1. When did you start writing?
"It probably sounds super cheesy, but I’ve been writing since first grade. At the time, I wrote terrible stories about talking bears who went to masquerade balls and leprechauns buying horse-drawn coaches. I still have copies of my story 'collections.' By second grade, I was telling people that I wanted to be an author AND an international spy when I grew up. That additional goal fell away at some point when I realized spies needed to be able to keep secrets, a skill that is fundamentally outside my wheelhouse."

2. What is your method of writing? Notebooks, computer?
"I scribble little sentences and phrases in both a paper notebook and in a running document I keep in my phone’s note app. These are mostly jumping off points, though—little snatches of things that I want to ruminate on. Once I’m ready to really draft, I go back to the notes, type the starting sentences or phrases in a blank Word document, and begin drafting in earnest."

3. Where do you draw inspiration? 
"I think I have four primary 'gates' that I use to enter my shorter work: 1) Image, 2) Language, 3) Theme/Topic, and 4) Emotion. So, for the first two, something will strike me as odd or funny or interesting—say, my son observing a seagull far inland, eating a battered fish filet outside a Long John Silver’s, or the phrase 'turd-based optimism' (both items from my list)—and I write it down in my notes and then let it simmer until it becomes something meaningful. For the second two gates, I usually have an idea I want to write about, such as a scientific concept or a situation I feel conflicted over, and then I consider that until I find a way in—usually via a phrase or image. In general, I have to marry at least two items of the four (i.e., a specific image and a concept) to light a fire under the piece." 

4. What got you interested in hybrid writing?
"I love that hybrids don’t have to declare themselves—they can be fiction or fact, image-driven or concept-driven. A piece can hide out inside the borrowed form of another and work with or against the form. For example, I write a lot of recipe pieces, and most of these are really flash nonfiction essays written in 'steps,' but I often publish them as poems or hybrids because then I don’t have to fill in the connective tissue in the way many people would expect of a nonfiction piece. Lyrical poetry and hybrid forms are more often dissociative and impressionistic, and there are no fact-checkers—no one will ever read a poem or hybrid and call my partner to verify whether she’s ever dated a girl named April or experienced blackouts, both of which I mention in the hybrid piece 'Recipe: Unidentified Floral Objects.' Not that small literary magazines usually fact-check flash pieces like that, but the expectation of empirical truth is still there, and it can be intrusive to people’s privacy. Some of my images are conjured to serve an emotional or imaginative truth, and those, to me, are just as vital types of truth as fact-checkable truth. So, hybrids excite me because they open up all of these possibilities in terms of form and content."

5. Could you share your process and thoughts on writing?
"I’ve already described my process a bit, but one thing I really enjoy is the moment of finding a way into something I really want to discuss. For example, I was recently overwhelmed by a friend cutting off communication with me without any explanation or clear reason. But once I decided to explore it in a piece, the question became how to write about this in a way that could potentially connect to readers through clear sensory imagery—and that, I hoped, would help my piece open out into a larger reflection on grief and friendship. So, I chose to write it as a recipe, and I began by looking for an actual recipe for some kind of ghost confection: I wanted to capture the loss of the friendship as a sort of specter in my life, and that also played on the idea of being ghosted while still being grounded in sweetness; I didn’t want it all to be negative because the pain came from losing something and someone I loved. So, I searched until I found a recipe for ghost candy that included the kinds of ingredients I wanted to appear in the poem. By searching for the ingredients I wanted to incorporate, I was also able to include a cool food fact about pistachios that I’d made note of awhile before, and it all came together from there. I don’t know how good the piece is—in part because I’m still in the emotional weeds of the situation—but the process of writing it did everything I wanted it to do, and that’s something that makes me feel like a piece is successful, whether it ever sees the light of day or not."

6. How do you know when to write poetry? How do you know when to write prose? 
"The short answer to this is that I don’t really know—sometimes, something comes out in lineated verse, and I convert it to short prose later because it seems to have a kind of narrative arc that lends itself to microprose. On the other hand, I sometimes write what I think is going to be brief, meditative prose and then realize I could add duality, ambiguity, and interest with lines and stanza breaks, and then it gets a shape imposed on it. Anything long (say, 500+ words) is usually going to go into prose for me, especially anything concept- or fact-heavy—lineation creates opportunities and malleability for the language, but it also weighs it down for the reader because they have to process the whys and hows and wherefores of the language in addition to the ideas themselves. I love the flexibility of moving between forms and genres."

7. What do you hope people take away from your work? 
"In terms of my short work, I really hope readers take away a sense of how making connections, especially between dissimilar things, can create weight and significance: A recipe for a drink called an Obituary Cocktail provides an opportunity to reflect on mortality and long-distance relationships after the loss of a parent. Watching a video of a freelance ballerina over and over allows the speaker to consider her own relationship to capitalism and the consumption of art. I hope readers are able to make those kinds of strange connections for themselves about their own raw materials.

I also have this kind of giant hope for every human I know that they will love, obsess, despise, sweat, laugh, hurt, and leap in whatever ways they’re going to, about whichever things they want to, and that they feel the freedom to construct the palaces of their lives from the materials they make in those moments. For me, words are the vehicle for that. That’s not about what my work does, to be clear—I just think those are the opportunities that writing and art provide, for those who create as much as those who experience the creations."

8. What project(s) do you hope to take on?
"I don’t really have any new projects I want to take on right now, but that’s mainly because I want to finish two big projects I’ve been working on: First, I have a hybrid poetry manuscript which focuses on food and drink as ways into questions of queerness, parenthood, grief, religion, and embodiment, and that one is so close to being done I can taste it (pun intended). The second is a memoir project that ties to the poetry manuscript—it deals with the intersection of fad diets and disordered eating with Southern evangelical culture. That one is in an earlier stage, and I’m really enjoying the research that goes with the writing."

9. What writing advice do you find totally useless?
"I wouldn’t say there’s anything that’s totally useless because everything works for someone out there, but for me, as both a writer and teacher of writing, I dislike most kinds of 'banning' advice. Anything that tells you what not to do—for example, 'never use adverbs or em dashes,' 'take out every use of the word ‘just,’' 'never tell the reader what a speaker is feeling'—feels like a useless chain to me, especially when those edicts don’t come with any direction about what the writer should be doing instead. I’m not saying that I’d like to read an unbroken string of adverbs or a pure discussion of emotion with no imagery attached, but edicts often serve to hamstring the writer. In addition, judicious, intentional breaking of 'rules' can be engaging, delightful, subversive, thought-provoking, and more."

10. And finally, what do you enjoy doing that you don’t talk about enough. Tell me all about it!
"I’m not sure this is a thing that needs talking about, but one of my favorite things to do is to make up stories about passersby. I’ll spot someone interesting at a café or in a store, or I might hear them speak for a moment, and then I spin them a full backstory, out loud or in my head. It’s even better when someone else weaves the tale with me—one of the things I adore about my girlfriend is that she’s all in on this, even though she claims not to have a creative bone in her body. For example, we recently interacted with this willowy, imperious, beautiful, withering manager for an outdoor restaurant. We were meeting a friend, and the friend arrived about fifteen minutes after we did. By the time she got there, we had an entire narrative about how the manager was moonlighting as an assassin, carrying arsenic in her locket and living in a meticulously-restored Victorian where she grew oleander in her window boxes; we’d named each of the four cats we’d given her. We announced this with so much detail and such authority that our friend found herself legitimately confused for a second before she realized we’d concocted it all based on the roughly two minutes we’d spent with the woman. Moments like that bring me pure, undiluted joy."


Hear B.​​ read her poem "Recipe: Rhubarb, Ginger, and Chili Jam."
​

B. Tyler Lee is the author of one short poetry collection, With Our Lungs in Our Hands (Redbird Chapbooks, 2016), and her essay “A large volume of small nonsenses” won the 2020 Talking Writing Contest. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in 32 Poems, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Blue Mesa Review, Qwerty Literary Journal, Crab Orchard Review, Cream City Review, The Hunger, Jet Fuel Review, Whale Road Review, and elsewhere. She attended the 2021 Tin House Summer Workshop for poetry. In years past, she won a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Award, was named a Ruth Lilly finalist, and had a creative nonfiction piece listed as a Best American Essays notable work. More of her work can be found at BTylerLee.com, and she tweets as @BTylerLee7. She teaches and parents in the Midwest.

1. ​When did you start writing?
"My journey with writing has been extremely sporadic, to be honest. I remember trying my hand(s) at writing at an early age (maybe 7 or 8), and then abandoning it. Thereafter, I only really wrote creatively when I was required to. Like as part of the syllabus at school, for example. At about 16, I ventured into writing for myself once more and I enjoyed it enough to write poetry for a solid 3 years thereafter. I had a few poems published then in small magazines which are now sadly defunct. 

However, as I ventured further into engineering, I hadn’t realized how far away from my creative pursuits it was carrying me. It was only in my honors year of engineering that I came to the realisation that I do not have to box or segregate my interests. All of my likes, dislikes and interests form part of who I am; they don’t have to live separated inside of myself. 

That’s when I started writing creatively again. As I had been battling with my mental health at the time, most of my writing focuses on that. Writing creatively allowed (and still allows) me to express my disorder(s) in ways that I verbally often cannot."

2. What is your method of writing? Notebooks, computer?
"I don’t really have a writing method if I am being honest. Some days, inspiration will hit me suddenly when I’m in the bathroom. I’ll rush to my phone and type it out roughly in my notes app quickly. Then, later I will edit that piece properly on my computer.

I don’t really use notebooks for creative writing. I do, however, counterintuitively use a notebook to record all my submissions. I know that this doesn’t make any sense at all; an excel spreadsheet would probably be better suited for this, but  somehow, I just like seeing the submissions on paper – as though they’re more ‘real’ or tangible in that regard."

3. How do you title poems?
"This is an interesting question and I imagine everyone would have a different answer to it. Sometimes, I begin with the title! This happens when the title is the first thing that pops into my mind; almost as though that particular poem is possessing me and I’m merely a medium. 

Other times, I’ll write the entire poem and then only think of a title based on what I feel the main theme or concept of the poem is or should be. Once again, there is no structure or method to my process, sadly; it’s all ‘going-with-the-flow’, really. I try not to restrict myself creatively, as I feel restricted enough in my other pursuits."

4. When do you know if a poem is done?
"I don’t! I don’t think any of my poems (even the published ones) are really done in the complete sense. I feel like something more can always be added or edited or removed or improved upon. I don’t think any of my poems are done; there can always be more (or even less) of or to it."

5. You’ve published, as of July 4th, over 40 pieces this year alone. How are you able to write and produce such a staggering number? 
"There are 2 reasons for this, really. 

1 is that I have the tendency to get mildly obsessive about certain things. So, when I started submitting in January this year, I aimed to get 10 pieces of writing/photography/art published for the year. By the time I had reached that goal in February, I had fallen too far down the rabbit hole! The process of submitting and discovering new lit mags/journals had already formed a part of my obsession and I just simply went along with it. I think it’s cooling down a little now, though.

The other reason is that I am sitting on a pile (slush pile?) of unpublished writing. I’ve discovered close to 350- 400 poems  (this may not be a staggering amount for people that write daily), that I had written (on my phone, laptop, in notebooks years ago) and had completely forgotten about. So, some of the poems that are being published now were written recently, some were written 3 or 4 years back and some were written when I was 16 or 17. So if it ever feels to the reader that ‘the voice’ in my writing is not consistent, that’s probably why: they’ve been written at varying ages and stages of my life."

6. You have an upcoming poetry collection, Washed Away, coming soon from Alien Buddha Press. Can you tell me, a little, what it’s about? 
"Well, to summarize it briefly: it’s a collection that centers around my struggles with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and depression. 

The collection is fragmented into three stages. In these stages, I have tried to outline the stages or progression of my disorder as paralleled to the progression of the collection. As the reader travels through the collection, they’ll be travelling alongside me on my mental health journey. I’ve also likened these stages to the stages of washing one’s hands i.e. soap lathering, rinsing and drying. This is in part due to me being a compulsive hand washer and in part, due to the emphasis of handwashing during this awful pandemic. 

Needless to say, that is how the title of the collection was born; from the process of washing and being washed away. Not only do I feel that I wash germs and soap off of my hands, but there are days when I feel washed away by my disorder(s). Days when I feel that I have to rebuild or remold myself from being disintegrated or washed away."

7. What project(s) do you hope to take on?
"Right now, I am pretty keen to take on any interesting or innovative projects! There are so, so many creative, talented and innovative people in the lit mag community. People are continuously creating and growing, and I love to see that. This makes me think that the possibilities surrounding new projects are basically endless. 

I would, however, like to explore visual poetry a little more. I have seen some pieces featured on various websites/journals and it amazes me how some poets can create text so visually. That truly is a skill that I do not have and would like to explore it a little more. I would also like to explore writing fiction. I have tried to write a handful of pieces recently and those were not great (they were bad!)."

8. What do you hope people take away from your work? 
"As a large portion of my work revolves around mental illness, I hope that people who have suffered from similar experiences will know that they are not alone; someone does understand. For people who have not gone through something similar, I hope that my work can offer a brief spotlight on matters that they may not be aware of and/or may not understand. 

I do understand that my own experiences with my own mental health issues cannot serve as an umbrella or blanket experience(s) for everyone, but I do hope that in the dark seemingly endless night of mental illness and solitude, my work luminates a small space in the same manner that a minute firefly would."

9. What writing advice do you find totally useless?
"None! I enjoy listening to advice from everyone about anything! I don’t always (basically never) heed said advice, but it does give me insight into the way other people work, think and write. I think that’s important information; it helps me understand them, myself and more about the world."

10. And finally, what do you enjoy doing that you don’t talk about enough. Tell me all about it!
"I’m not particularly good (I suck at) this but it formed part of my honor’s dissertation and my current master’s dissertation: game development. I am not an avid gamer (I don’t game at all) and I knew nothing about game development before 2018. But I’ve dipped my toes into these seemingly infinite waters and it’s been interesting. 

I have only developed about 3 very simple games, but the process is what is interesting to me. Currently, I am trying to develop a very simple prototype for an anxiety management app and I have realized just how much I don’t know about coding or game development and just how far I have to travel in terms of learning about these topics!

I’m also thinking about creating a simple twine game to allow players to understand OCD a little better. There may (or may not, don’t hold me accountable to this) a twine poem at some point, too!"


Hear Shiksha​​ read her poem "On some days, I have killed myself at least twice before breakfast."
​

​Shiksha Dheda is a South African of Indian descent. She uses writing to express her OCD and depression roller-coaster ventures. Sometimes, she dabbles in photography, painting, and baking lopsided layered cakes. Her debut poetry collection is forthcoming from Alien Buddha Press. She rambles annoyingly on at Twitter: @ShikshaWrites.

1. ​When did you start writing?
"I started writing as a kid in dollar store composition notebooks. I tried writing novels for the longest time and eventually at around 14 I started trying to write novels parodying my friends and our relationships. But I didn’t start writing poetry in any kind of serious way until college when a professor told me that everyone can write poetry and I just hadn’t written any I like yet. I took that to heart and in the end of 2019 I started writing poetry but I started writing poetry in earnest in the fall of 2020."

2. This is the first year you had poems published. Congrats! How did you come to send work out to literary magazines?
"One my all-time favorite college professors Dr. Jaydn Dewald introduced me to the world of chapbooks and online literary magazines in my first creative writing class with him and I fell in love with the indie world of poetry publishing. I saw online literary magazines as an easy entrance into the world of publishing my writing which has always been my dream and started by submitting to a pandemic anthology which rejected me. But in January I just started submitting over and over again until I finally got an acceptance from Wrongdoing Mag."

3. What is your method of writing? Notebooks, computer?
"Typically, I write in Microsoft Word on my laptop unless I’m struck by an idea then I’ll quickly open my huge document for poetry and quickly jot it down. Due to having ADHD and slow handwriting I try and stay away from writing poems down because my brain ends up moving faster than my hands can."

4. Could you share your process and thoughts on writing?
"Okay yes. I love this question. I think that writing and sharing stories and words and thoughts is one of the most intrinsic parts of the human experience. We as a culture especially here in the west don’t necessarily value stories outside of the literary communities and I think that writing is such a fundamental part of living. Which kind of why my ‘process’ is less about trying to force out certain things that I want to write about and more about writing the things that want to be written. So, instead of having certain writing rituals I more so, have rules for when I can and can’t write. Like I don’t write under the influence of any sort of recreational substance. I don’t write early in the morning at home. I can write if I’m sad only if I’m not avoiding feeling the emotion. Writing is so cathartic for me and I think by just allowing myself the freedom of writing what my brain is throwing out at me with no consequences produces my best work."

5. How do you title poems?
"This is so funny to me as a question because I’ve talked at length with my friends about this and my titles kind of just come to me. I’ll leave pieces untitled for the longest time until the title appears in my head. They usually reflect the vibe of the work more than anything else and no two poems are titled the same way."

6. How do you know when a poem is done?
"So, in the same vein the poem itself kind of just tells me. I’m big on listening to your writing and I do a lot of reading out loud in my room to myself and my dog Tiffany. I love big images and I love leaving poems hanging on by one last big image. So, I just wait until when I read it out loud I get goosebumps or think to myself, ‘If someone else wrote this I’d never stop thinking about it.’"

7. What do you hope people take away from your work?
"I want people to have the images stuck in their head for days. I love poetry that can inspire art and music and any sort of creative pursuit and I want people to read my work and imagine it in a million other artistic formats. I think it’s so important that art is constantly in conversation with the past and future and I would love for people to think about other things they’ve read or watched or listened to. There is a community of poetry readers on Tumblr that make collages of art, poetry and literature and it is my absolute dream to be included in one. So, if people close my work thinking a million other thoughts and tying it to other art I think I’ve accomplished my goal."

8. What project(s) do you hope to take on?
"I eventually want to query a chapbook of southern gothic fusion poetry this Fall. But, long term I would love to get more involved in the guest reader / editor of literary magazine side of things. Curation of art is one of my favorite things in the world and I’d love to work with a magazine to help get great writing out into the world. The world needs great art and to be apart of the process of getting it out there is the dream."

9. What writing advice do you find totally useless?
"‘Write drunk, edit sober.’ I that this phrase completely lacks nuance and if taken at face value could actual be a detriment to the artistic process. Because if you wanted to tell people to write honestly and edit with impunity I don’t understand why you wouldn’t just say that. It absolutely infuriates me when people throw this advice at new writers. Your artistic process shouldn’t hinge on anything other than the want to create and I think this phrase really causes more harm than good."

10. And finally, what do you enjoy doing that you don’t talk about enough. Tell me all about it!
"I breed and train dogs! I work with an amazing responsible breeding program in the south and through that I get to work with German Shepherds, Dobermans, and Newfoundlands. I stay home and train the dogs I my best friend and I own together. We work together to get them titled in dog shows and keep them healthy and happy. Recently one of our sheppies won her first title in show and two more are slated to show later this month. I love working with dogs and keeping up with their training and maintenance. I love them like family and they frequently inspire poems. My first accepted poem actually features a line about Bucket one of our sheppies. I absolutely love them all will talk on and on about them given the chance but that can lead to rambling." 


Hear Calia​​ read her poem "vanilla bean chapstick."
​

​Calia Jane Mayfield is a Black southern poet originally from Georgia who now resides in South Carolina with her best friend and many dogs. Her other writings are available in Wrongdoing Mag, Not Deer, and Poetically Mag.