"When you see someone who looks like your mom there and she’s like ‘this puts so much of my pain into something concrete that I can hold,’…That’s when I’m like okay, I’m doing something right and I just want to keep doing it."

“I used to submit to anthologies and magazines when I was a student – but I knew I was never going to be picked up. All their writing was, you know, about the Canadian landscape or something. And my poem is about this woman with her legs spread open.”

“…For a long time, it debilitated me a lot. Nothing that I wrote was good enough. I’d start writing then be like, “Nope. This is sh–.” And that was a really negative experience to have with my writing, because the more I said that, it was almost like the writing in my heart would cower into a corner and be like, “I’m not coming out.” I really had to work through a few weeks of being kind to myself and saying, “Your job is to get to the desk, have your pen out, and write, write, write, write.” You have to get through the bad stuff before you can get to the pit of everything that you really enjoy…”

“People aren’t used to poetry that’s so easy and simple.”

“it was when I stopped searching for home within others and lifted the foundations of home within myself I found there were no roots more intimate than those between a mind and body that have decided to be whole.”

“he placed his handson my mindbefore reachingfor my waistmy hipsor my lipshe didn't call mebeautiful firsthe called meexquisite - how he touches me”