Issue link: http://tcnj.uberflip.com/i/1373206
33 SPRING 2021 TM: Do you model your own teaching after how Ward taught you? GC: I always say I teach people, not poetry. And so that says it all. It's always a good journey. TM: How do you do that? GC: I have a prompt that is a killer. TM: And can you reveal it? GC: It's like a recipe [laughs]. My prompt is: Our lives are buildings and each floor is a different year of our lives. So I'm a skyscraper, because I am old. But if students are 18 years old, they have 18 floors, and every floor has a story. Accessing the story is really important, that makes them realize their power. If they come and go and don't tell their story, we will never know them. And I talk about how to make that story into a poem. TM: Do you feel you've transformed, or are you still in motion? GC: Oh man, I'm just beginning. I have three books coming out. TM: And then what's next for you? GC: The moon. TM: What?! GC: I am poetry editor for a magazine called PoetsArtists and the curator, Didi Menendez, has been invited along- side 1,200 other curators to gather material [for the Peregrine Collection, a project scheduled to launch works of art to the moon in July 2021]. So she will send some of my poetry to the moon. TM: Wow. GC: I really just wanted to go back to Trenton. But I'll go to the moon instead. Listen, for someone who didn't have TV as a girl, for her poetry to go to the moon, it's significant. ■ My sacred space, a bird flying to the feeder the shade of a tree, berries in the forest heat from the sun on the pane flames of experience lashing on glass the clear path of vision the straight edge of sky a parting of water picking us up placing us exactly there history has been shattered into pieces that will not fit together how large is loss how much does it take to fill how do we gather it in our arms when the city was destroyed with illness there was a place I could not reach right now a small animal is breaking free in the woods the milk of the moon is shining on these words that come from me and do not return empty. VIEWS FROM THE WINDOW A COVID-19 Poem