On My Craft: A Manifesto

I believe, along with Audre Lorde, that “poetry is the language of the marginalized.” This is the source and pulse of my craft. To approach the page is to confront limitations— those imposed by the world, by another, or by the self—and therefore I believe that to write is to perform the ultimate act of bravery, the ultimate act of resistance, of defiance.

I do not force poems into being. I reject the mechanical grind of routine. In a world that seeks to constrain creativity, I believe in poems that emerge as they must, out of necessity, out of urgency, not as products of artificial attempt. This is not to say that poetry is without effort, but rather that the demand for production under capitalist and societal pressures is a fundamentally flawed one.

I refuse singularity. I insist on plurality. I believe language is not fixed, not objective, but fluid, contradictory, and alive. The page is a home for contradiction, yet also a maker of truth.