Light and I “met,” if we can call it that, when we were both taking part in Lambda Literary’s virtual 2021 Writer’s Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices. I don’t know that I had prepared myself for the strangeness of a poetry workshop via Zoom, and ultimately found myself a bit flustered and out of joint for most of the retreat. But Light, in their small square, looked serene, always attentive even when not speaking. When they did choose to come off mute, they were kind, thoughtful, and incisive. Their poems had startling clarity and an expansive, omnivorous approach to form both abstractly and in the physical shape each poem took on the page. I knew, without any doubt, they’d have a book out soon. Thankfully, I was right! And now the world has the pleasure of hosting Light’s debut collection, More Sure: Poems and Interruptions, published by Arsenal Pulp Press in April of 2023.
After my first reading of the book, I knew I wanted to talk to Light about More Sure. As people who share poetic and creative interests and some lived experiences in common, I thought there was a lot we could do to unpack the incredible intentionality of this book’s construction, the intensity of the emotional gesture in these poems, and nuanced critiques I don’t see happening in other work today. So I set up a shared Google doc with a few questions, and over the spring and early summer, Light and I would contribute to it. This is what that process yielded.
—Trevor Ketner
TREVOR KETNER Form feels central to this book in some really interesting ways. Firstly, there’s how poems literally sit on the page and relate to each other in ways that feel nearly physical (I’m thinking of the two sonnets that are). As someone who is interested in the physicality of language and has craved seeing more work that approaches language in this way, the sculptural aspect of the collection is deeply satisfying.
