KNOCK

My poetry collection Knock is forthcoming in February 2018 from Half Mystic Press and to help usher it into the world I’ll be blogging every week about the writing and publishing process.

This book is the beating heart of my own mental illness, one that wants to show itself—its complexities, its truths, its push and pull and return; it wants to help dismantle the societal stigmas that other those not perceived as sane or stable or whole.

As someone diagnosed with major severe depression, but also someone who has been called “smile girl” (more than once, many times more than once), there’s a constant demand that I explain myself, that I get better and stay that way, that I smile or cry at the appropriate times, the times that make sense to others. They want me to speak until they don’t want me to speak; they refuse to hear until they demand to hear.

This book is a question and an answer, a dialogue and interrogation, a writing and re-writing, where each truth remains and won’t be silenced.

This book is my tongue, simultaneously body and voice.

Thank you for reading, friends. If you want to sign up for my weekly newsletter, fill out the contact form at the bottom of this page. In the coming weeks, I’ll be blogging much more about this process and about the amazing editors/publishers at HMP who have held and helped this book so tenderly, who believe with me that we can reach not just those who need to hear, but those who need to be heard.