For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our ho… - Audre Lorde

I learned how important grammar is, that part of the understanding process is grammatical. That’s how I taught myself to write prose. I kept learning and learning. I’d come into my class and say, “Guess what I found out last night. Tenses are a way of ordering the chaos around time.” I learned that grammar was not arbitrary, that it served a purpose, that it helped to form the ways we thought, that it could be freeing as well as restrictive.

As outsiders, we need each other for support and connection and all the other necessities of living on the borders. But in order to come together we must recognize each other.

Our poems formulate the implications of ourselves, what we feel within and dare make real (or bring action into accordance with), our fears, our hopes, our most cherished terrors.