KARAN

Sarah, thank you for these mesmerizing poems — they explore grief with such startling precision and imagination. In “Beginning,” you write “I blew into an empty wine bottle so I could hear the ocean” – a line that captures that haunting search for what’s absent. Let’s begin with the process question. How do you start writing a poem? Does it begin with an image, a line, or an idea? Do you have a writing routine? And most importantly, what drives you to write poetry?

SARAH

So often, my poems begin with an intriguing line that sometimes becomes the title. It always feels like a gift—here is this line that arrives with so much authority that seems to have fallen from the sky. The process of interrogation becomes the poem: What does it mean?

Other times, I write a poem to process something—sadness, grief, anxiety, depression, or an especially difficult or moving experience. It often happens in stages, as if I am collecting scraps of colorful fabric without realizing why, and then one day I start sewing them into a quilt and I’m like Oh, that’s what these were for. I am suddenly making connections between these seemingly disparate thoughts and occurrences. Elizabeth Gilbert describes the magic of the creative process so eloquently in the book Big Magic. 

I don’t have a routine—I write when I am moved by something. I am drawn to writing poetry because it offers both intimacy and distance—it gives me a voice as a veil covers my face.

KARAN

Your poems often use formal constraints — like the abecedarian and ghazal — to explore overwhelming emotions. In “Abecedarian While Conjugating Verbs at the Cemetery,” you write “I was prepared for / misfortune—not for how hard it would be to convert the verbs to past tense.” How do you think about the relationship between form and grief? Does structure offer a container for these difficult emotions, as it did perhaps in Agha Shahid Ali’s Canzones?

SARAH

Absolutely—writing a poem about something difficult, like grief, allows me to see things I didn’t see before. Formal constraints can help shape those perspectives by requiring my brain to think more creatively, unlocking my imagination. (This feels true until I get to the letter x in an abecedarian).

One of the things I love about abecedarians is that you don’t know where the poem is going to take you. You’re working with a predetermined letter at the beginning of each line, so sometimes you can’t say what you think you want to say, and you end up being surprised by the turns the poem takes. As a result, you can also be surprised by what you learn about yourself and how you feel. It’s like solving the problem of choice overload. When you limit your options, your brain compensates by thinking more creatively to solve a problem. 

On the other hand, ghazals invite you to abandon narrative and explore a topic from many different angles. With ghazals, I always figure out the refrain (the radif) and rhyming word (the qafia) before anything else. I might not know how to begin a poem about grief or longing, but if I already know how each couplet will end, suddenly my mind starts generating ideas and making connections, and that’s how I build the poem. Constraints can open up a world of perspective.

KARAN

I love, too, how you blend humor with heartbreak. In “Ghazal for Longing,” you write, “How sweet he is, like a hotel pillow chocolate. (Sigh!) / Thoughts of him give me tooth decay—longing.” Tell us about this balancing act. How does humor function in your exploration of grief and desire? Or largely, what space does humor have in poetry?

SARAH

I write about some heavy things like grief, mental health struggles, and heartache. Humor has always been a coping strategy for me, so it naturally shows up in my writing, often by surprise. Humor can add much-needed levity to an otherwise heavy topic. Specifically, grief and desire can manifest in strange, surprising ways, so I think those topics naturally lend themselves to humor. Sometimes, the heart needs a break.

KARAN

In “When You Return from the Dead,” you create this surreal conversation that feels both impossible and utterly real. You write “grief is not about what’s lost, but what’s left behind.” How do you think about absence and presence in your poems? When did you first realize you were drawn to this liminal space between life and death and when did you decide to honor that realization?

SARAH

Every poem is a balancing act between absence and presence, which is why I am drawn to writing poetry about grief. There is so much intention behind every single word in a poem, every space, every line break. How can I honor what the poem is trying to do, honor what I want to do, honor the reader’s experience? What do I leave in, what do I take out? What do I bring to life, what do I let die?

In the same way that I think every poem is a love poem, I think every poem is also a grief poem. Love and grief are inextricably connected. The poem is alive when you are writing it, and every finished poem becomes a ghost as you move on to the next one. I let the poem take me by the hand—it’s an experienced guide. It knows more than I do about letting go. 

KARAN

Your poems often include vivid catalogs and lists – from cloud types to flowers to metaphors for goodbye. “The anatomy of love—crushed mint, forsythia.” What draws you to these enumerations? What can these collections accomplish that other approaches might not?

SARAH

I love list poems and lists within poems. Reading a list in a poem feels like turning over a gem in my hand and watching light catch one facet, then another, then another, all these images flashing in quick succession. I think of lists as a great way to pull as much sensory imagery into the poem as possible, and sometimes when I'm writing a poem, I'll get a rush of images, the way thousands of unique seashells are washed up on shore by a huge wave. Then I sort through them and decide which ones to keep. This reminds me of something similar that I’ve heard poet Ellen Bass refer to as “controlled chaos.” This idea of casting a wide net to pull things into your poem and then examining what you’ve collected to see if, and how, it all fits together.

KARAN

This is a staple question for us and I’m always surprised by the range in everyone’s responses: There’s a school of poetry that believes a poem or a poet can categorize their work in one of these four ways: poetry of the body, poetry of the mind, poetry of the heart, poetry of the soul. Where would you place your work within this framework, if at all? And do you see your poetry moving in a different direction?

SARAH

This is a great question that feels almost impossible to answer definitively, especially because there is so much overlap, but I would say my poetry meets at the intersection of the heart and the mind, balancing emotion and logic. My poetry is guided by my heart, but then my brain wants to figure things out—there is often this desire to label, categorize, define, understand, philosophize, explain, intellectualize. My brain can’t resist the urge to get out a piece of chalk and try to work out the poem like a math problem. That analysis doesn’t always end up in the finished poem, but it’s part of the process, so its traces are left behind even after I erase the chalkboard. I love catching glimpses of the speaker’s analysis in a poem. I love it when a speaker is trying to figure something out, especially something that defies understanding. One poet who comes to mind is Victoria Chang, particularly the amazing collection, Obit.

KARAN

In “Abecedarian While Trapped Inside the Haunted Mansion Ride,” you write: “The strobe lights were my / obsessions, my heartbeats; the audio of sinister laughter and screaming / people was my life’s soundtrack.” How do you think about using metaphors from popular culture or everyday experiences to illuminate internal states? What possibilities do these connections open up?

SARAH

I think using metaphors to illuminate internal states can be powerful and visceral, which can make poems feel more relatable. The more time I spend with a poem, the more those connections not only “jump out” but also sharpen and become more defined. When I wrote “Abecedarian While Trapped Inside the Haunted Mansion Ride,” it felt natural to relate the sensory experience of a haunted mansion—the flashing lights and eerie soundtrack—to the experience of anxiety.

KARAN

You often play with voice and dialogue in these poems, creating conversations with the dead or with different aspects of yourself. In “The Anatomy of Grief,” you write, “I keep forgetting to close the doors of my poems. / You keep sneaking in.” (fucking hell!) Could you talk about this approach to multiplicity in your work? How do these dialogues help you explore complex emotional terrain?

SARAH

Well, when it comes to grief, the answer is that sometimes I really just want to have that last conversation with someone I’ve lost. I imagine that the conversation wouldn’t be that satisfying. It would feel dream-like, where the person speaks in riddles and you wake up and ask, what did they mean by that? And all you can do is speculate—you’ll never get the answer. These imagined conversations are my way of trying to capture grief honestly, because no matter how much you say or how much they say, it is never going to feel like enough. You’re in different realms, so the language isn’t quite the same. To add to that, the imagined conversation is happening inside of a poem, which relies on that balance of absence and presence. It’s bittersweet—this opportunity to imagine talking with someone you’ve lost, but then feeling like you’re left wanting more. To the extent that there is such a thing as the “other side” of grief, I believe we have to experience all of those difficult emotions to get there, and poetry helps me with that.

KARAN

Many of your poems navigate the boundary between the literal and metaphorical. One of my favorite of your lines here is: “The sky opened like a casket and out flew the birds, singing.” How do you think about metaphor in your work? When do you know that an image has transcended the literal to become something else?

SARAH

I am always making connections, constantly thinking about how two seemingly unlike things are actually alike, and that practice carries over into my poetry. The play between the literal and metaphorical becomes—like everything else—a balancing act. What I’m doing in a poem is making connections, and those connections will often naturally emerge if I give the poem enough space and spend enough time walking around inside of it. I leave the windows open to let the poem air out. And then the metaphors will slowly come out from their hiding places. For me, a metaphor shouldn’t feel forced. I don’t think I spend a lot of time actively thinking, what can I compare this to? I’m not erasing a line over and over again trying to turn it into something it doesn’t want to be.

KARAN

We always ask our poets for a poetry prompt at the end. Would you provide a prompt for our readers, to help them kickstart a poem?

SARAH

Writing a persona poem can be a way into a difficult poem, freeing one up to write with more honesty, risk, and vulnerability. I wrote "Abecedarian While Conjugating Verbs..." from the perspective of my novel’s protagonist. If you write fiction, write a poem from the perspective of one of your characters (bonus: this can also give you more insight into your character). Alternatively, embody a character from a book, TV show, or movie. You're using this persona as a vehicle, a way into a poem that may be challenging to write because of its topic or form, so especially try this if you have been wanting to write a ghazal, sonnet, sestina, abecedarian, or some other formal poem but don't know where or how to begin. See if your guard comes down when it's not really "you" writing. You can always choose to abandon the persona once you get started.

KARAN

We’d also love for you to recommend a piece of art (anything other than a poem) — perhaps a song, a film, or a visual artwork — that you find particularly inspiring or that you think everyone should experience.

SARAH

My favorite Mitski album, Be the Cowboy, but more specifically for the poetry lovers, the song “Two Slow Dancers.”