What do you want the audience to get out of this book?
I hope readers gain courage from these poems to live their lives honestly and with compassion, and to write or otherwise express artistically the deepest and most difficult experiences of their lives or their imaginations. I would like readers to see that it is possible to write about “real” things, feelings and actions that are often felt as shameful, and to come through to a place of acceptance and perhaps even celebration of their lives.
Why do you think this book is beneficial to your readers?
A Kind of Yellow is like a poem itself, in that the poems speak to each other through images and themes, and together tell the story of a particular life that has much in common with other lives around the world. I hoped in publishing the book that the poems would somehow be useful. So far, we have heard from high school sophomores who have been ashamed to tell anyone about parts of their lives, women who have survived abusive relationships, families who have lost a member by suicide, mothers who have lost a child at birth, in an accident, through illness, that the book has been a gift to them. Many are writing, some learning the craft more deeply so they can say what they really mean and have it heard.
