I gave myself a constraint where each entry must take place on a single neighborhood street. Many of the poems are inside the main characters’ home, but often they are outside in the front lawn, or back yard, or just down the street visiting a neighbor. While most of the pieces weren’t written with this concept in mind, once I found my through-line, I was able to collage and re-work them into some type of (hopefully visible) narrative, all the while writing pieces to connect the dots and fill in some necessary world-building details.

It’s hard to nail down what it’s like working with Leigh Chadwick, as you can imagine, being Leigh Chadwick, and based on all that other stuff I just said. Things just sort of…happen. I began writing in ways I’d never written before, and sometimes we’d even write at the same time, working on lines simultaneously, forming something real and depressing and beautiful out of nothing. Simply put, working with Leigh Chadwick is transformational.