I grew up hiding notebooks full of verse and stories when it would have been horribly uncool to be known to be trying in any way at all. I studied Drama and Economics in school, which is to say that I want to spend as much time as possible thinking about why people do things. I originally came to poetry through my background in theatre, and I continue to feel the influence of playwrights like Sarah Ruhl and artists like the Neo-Futurists in my home city of Chicago. From the latter, I learned that on stage and in poetry, anything goes, so long as it communicates, and I hold tightly to that.