“The big joke among my writing group, and even with my teenage daughter, is that it is almost impossible for me to write a happy poem. ‘Come on, Sarah, you can do it. You can write a happy poem.’ Yet those unhappy spaces are important to explore. We have few outlets to explore the darkness inside of us, and poetry is that outlet for me. Writing is about risk, whether it is students writing in a composition class or your own personal writing, whatever that may be, or even putting yourself out there on Facebook, because there is a curation involved. It all involves risk.”
Sarah Baker is the Director of the Northern Virginia Writing Project, an affiliate of the National Writing Project.