Kayleb Rae: “I really, really love poetry. I probably wouldn’t be able to live without it. I suppose I’m drawn most to poems that have an emotional core. So if a poem gives me goosebumps, which often they do if they’re done well, it makes me want to stay alive, and also to write them.”
MK: “When I was growing up I didn’t have any friends and it was very lonely and very sad. A group of kids chased me down in the third grade and broke my arm and I grew up feeling incredibly alone and very sad. But when I was in the fourth grade, I read a Wordsworth poem, and as soon as I read that poem, part of me knew I would never be alone again. And that’s why I read poetry, that’s why i write poetry, is that never feeling alone again and not wanting anyone else to ever feel alone again, that connectedness. There is community to it.”