I noticed that you're a yoga lover, and while reading “Deep Stretch”, I loved how the poem mimicked the movements of a typical yoga session and invited the audience to emotionally stretch with your words. Can you discuss how yoga has impacted your writing methods or helped you get into that "writing" state of mind?

I think the biggest thing my yoga practice has given me is the bravery to put my work out there in the world.  Yoga reminds us that we can physically put ourselves in challenging positions and choose to stay in them, breathing through moments of tension or fear. We can stretch, and by staying in discomfort instead of running from it, we can grow.  For me, this translates directly into my life off the mat.  I can emotionally put myself in "stretch" positions--facing the fear of an editor's rejection or a peer's critical feedback because I understand that discomfort is how we grow into our highest selves.  Yoga has helped me cultivate a mindset that seeks out discomfort as a tool for improvement instead of shying away from what may be a valuable opportunity out of fear of rejection or criticism. 

I enjoyed how the poem explores managing grief through movement. Rather than trying to expel or avoid these negative memories, instead, the poem speaks on allowing oneself to fully relive them. Can you talk a little more about the importance of sitting with your grief as a part of the healing process?  

One of the biggest things I've learned, both through my yoga practice and just life in general, is that you can't heal from things you don't allow yourself to fully feel.  So often, our culture encourages us to compartmentalize grief and loss, to shove them aside in order to keep moving forward.  We choke down this cocktail of dogged positivity in the name of progress, but that's just swallowing poison.  Real recovery, real growth, never comes from shoving some part of ourselves to the side.  When we deny ourselves any feeling, we begin to build walls that inhibit us from fully experiencing all feelings.  We have to welcome ourselves fully, the dark and the light, if we're going to become complete people.  Simply put, you can't work through what you won't stop to acknowledge. 

You dedicated “Deep Stretch” to Jillian Romano. Would you mind touching on the significance of this poem and what inspired you to dedicate this poem to Jillian? 

Jill was my first yoga teacher, and she's the reason I began to cultivate a regular, focused practice.  Her warmth and skill as a teacher helped me work through the early awkward stages of yoga--days where I felt like an elephant in a room full of swans.  Her classes emphasize this idea of taking personal responsibility for your growth on the mat, of leaning into sensation and learning where your own potential to stretch begins.  Jill's classes gave me permission to feel, to cultivate a physical bodily awareness that then moved into a more emotional self-awareness.  She encouraged me to pursue yoga teacher training and to earn my RYT (Registered Yoga Teacher) certification, and she mentored me through my early yoga teacher days.  

Jill's also just a badass human being and a ride or die kinda friend.  She lives heart wide open, with an unapologetic vulnerability and bravery I deeply admire.  This poem was a great opportunity to remind her of how wonderful and loved she is.

When did you first start writing poetry? Was there a specific poem or writer that especially influenced your writing style at all?

I guess I started writing some time in elementary school.  I have always been a notebook kid, and there's a basket of decades old journals at home that I have instructed my husband to burn without reading in the event of my untimely demise.  I love poets who play unabashedly with language, who pack a lot of meaning into poems that look simple on the surface.  Mary Oliver, Jose Olivarez, Clint Smith, Sharon Olds, Nikki Giovanni, and Randall Jarrell come immediately to mind.  Randall Jarrell was probably the first poet I really fell in love with, which I know is a strange option for a Gen X feminist, but I had a high school English teacher who had been in Jarrell's classes at UNC-Greensboro, and the way she spoke about him..... with the love and reverence I think all teachers dream of inspiring.  I also had a pretty passionate love affair with Allen Ginsberg's work in high school.  Oh, and Whitman!  I have a Whitman tattoo on my belly.  It reads, "And your very flesh shall be a great poem".  

But mostly, I just try to sound like me.  I am learning to trust in the fact that my poetry has stuff to say that no one else can say precisely the same way, and then I go about saying those things in the most me way possible. 

You mentioned that you often "scribble in notebooks." Do you prefer writing out your poetry by hand? Do you ever begin with your notebooks before transfering your pieces to a device? How does handwriting help you work through your ideas?

For me, poetry will always begin on the page.  There's a tactile release, a channeling, almost, in moving pen across paper.  I always start there.  I also like the immediacy of a notebook, the freedom I have to drop some words or lines or ideas down on a piece of paper, to capture it in real time, then leaf back through it later.  The words always start handwritten on the page, but I move to a computer pretty quickly when it comes time to play with line work and to really build the shape of the poem.  If the page gives me freedom, the computer screen helps me find the constraint I need to craft purposefully.

What advice do you have for aspiring writers? 

Find your people.  Seek out folks whose work you respect and whose feedback can help you get better. I owe an unrepayable debt to Steven Leyva and the community at the Wildacres Writers Workshop.  The love and care they have poured into me and my work have given me the confidence I need to grow as a writer.  Artists can't create in a vacuum; we need other people to push and challenge us.

Read Kelly’s poem, “Deep Stretch” in dulcet Literary magazine, vol. One, Issue No. 1