“The older we get, just like a car, right? It gets older, it's not going to last forever. Hearts break, shit happens. But there's always this idea of repair…” 

- J. T. Trigonis

“I’m speaking from my soul ‘cause that’s what I’m willing to throw on the line to do this.” 

- Rashad Wright

“Somebody has to speak up, otherwise there’s not going to be a world to inherit. And so I understand that there’s a little bit of hope.”
- Heretic Vicar

“There’s nothing like when someone internalizes what you said and they gather something else from it. And that’s what the poem was supposed to do. Who am I to get in the way of that? I know why I wrote it, but whatever the words do after that, that’s the universe.”
- James C. Ellerbe

“Everything that gets written is like a minute in time. It’s pretty much the way I think, the way I live my life, the way I communicate.” 
- Arianna Astuni 

“I think learning from each other and being able to empathize with the work… that work is universal. I mean, it doesn't matter if your canvas is a canvas, if it's a blank page, a stage, the work is still the work.”

- Munsif Husami

“I really feel like the work I'm trying to do is from whatever grief I can hold that I can be with, that's my journey. It's just what I got told to do.”

- Sunday Blu

Welcome to The Interviews, the transcriptions of our conversations held at the end of each poetry feature’s performance at our monthly poetry open mic series, Poets & Storytellers Open.