Today's Headline: "Kayleb Rae Candrilli on the Cyclical Nature of Poetry and Healing" I wrote the poem in the months following my family’s departure from Ukraine in February 2022. We left our home in Lviv on Valentine's Day, carrying three small backpacks, hoping for a quick return. Ten days later, Russia launched a full-scale invasion. Some things are worse than war and resistance, and those were the things we fled from: occupation, oppression, surveillance, arrests, purges, disappearances, executions. We got lucky, in that our town did not get occupied or destroyed, and we have been able to visit often. Yet due to frequent air raids and constant threat of deadly bombardment, life there feels like life under siege: it's beautifully intense, and every moment counts because it could be your last.
Oksana Maksymchuk on "Tempo" |
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Kayleb Rae Candrilli on Poetry and Healing
"I’ve always considered bearing witness to be a crucial prong of poetry. I fall in a long lineage of poets who feel the same. But I often wonder if witnessing, on its own, fulfills what is (or will be) asked of us as poets. I think a poem that witnesses and names can be a successful one. But perhaps the poet’s life should be one more of action. We’ve seen it, we’ve named it, now what? I suppose I’m mainly thinking through this for myself and trying to figure how I might be most useful to the world and those around me."
viaELECTRIC LITERATURE |
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What Sparks Poetry: Rowan Ricardo Phillips on Drafts
"Each stage of the poem’s evolution reshaped its engagement with inherited forms. The invocation, the sound patterns, even the omission of forbidden—each choice was informed by an ongoing dialogue with Milton’s legacy. Yet through this recursive process, the poem became its own. The recursive act of writing allowed me to rework Milton’s themes of creation and rebellion through a contemporary lens, tracing a poetic lineage that spans from the epic tradition to the fractured rhythms of modern music." |
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