The Importance of Poetry in My Life

You were born in Okinawa and then grew up in Southern California. What was the role, if any, that poetry had in your life when you were growing up? Was it around? Did you think about poetry? No. The poetry like germ started because I was born far away in a different place with a different language to a mother who spoke a different language. And I think it's some of that tension with language and immigration and spaces at home that. made me want to write poems.