“It will alter the way you hear poetry forever. And not in a good way.”

One of the things I took from the show was emotional possibility.

I was a poor, geeky black kid in Indianapolis. There is nothing mythological about that.

You should check out William Shatner’s album The Transformed Man.

Because before that I wasn’t thinking about systems or food insecurity or whatever.

It was in the air somehow. That ownership of bigotry. I hadn’t seen it since I was a kid.

It’s financial of course, but it’s also the lifestyle choices. The more money people have the further away from each other they often want to be.

It made me want to change the kinds of poems I was writing, but I’m terrible at writing overtly political poems.

I wanted to be like Spock because he was unflappable.

I never thought I would type that I learned how to emote in poems from watching Star Trek but there it is.

Bones was a grouch but he was sympathetic. The show worked like a boy band in that way… it had characters who embodied different psychic or emotional positions and that allowed me to see a great range of things

That was one of things that surprised me so much when I was writing the poems.

I had to find a way to be more honest about what happened. And it wasn’t fun to write, even though the poems aren’t 100% autobiographical.

They are 100% the product of the circumstances that led me home.

By that I mean, honest and not trying to amplify some mythological version of myself.

I mean getting people to think about what language actually means before they use it is a good thing.

There is no way I would have written these poems had I not come back.

I’ve had to adjust to karaoke as a modern reality that obscures our hunt for what we’re truly after.

But it’s a poor church that cares only for what happens to a soul after it leaves this life.” -Damien

10.30 Newsnight: What Are The Chances Of World War Three Breaking Out After You Have Gone To Bed?

Really, I didn’t know my dad very well. He and my mother split up after the war. I was raised by my maternal grandmother and grandfather, and by my mother.

Getting to the top has an unfortunate tendency to persuade people that the system is OK after all.

It is the first cry after birth

After Russia (winning bronze at Rostelecom Cup), I’m one of the top Canadian ladies.

In love, fidelity signifies this extended victory: the randomness of an encounter defeated day after day through the invention of what will endure.