Joan Kwon Glass: The Tribe of Invisible People

How does a person deal with grief in poetry? In this interview Joan Kwon Glass discusses her first full-length collection, Night Swim, winner of the Diode Poetry Prize (2021), which explores the death by suicide of both her nephew and sister. Glass believed nobody would want to read her book, but she discovered many with similar issues who craved an open forum to discuss them. These are the "Tribe of invisible people." Kwon discusses the poets she read to give her courage to write her own book, and what she learned about truth-telling along the way.

References
Black out poems
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
TED KOOSER
T.S. Eliot
Ezra Pound
Objective Correlative
Diannelly Antigua
Eugenia Lee
Sparrows and Blood Sparrows
Ugly Music
Don't speak ill of the dead
Spartans
How Writing Heals, Hayley Bauman, Psy.D.
Chen Chen
Don't Call us Dead
Danez Smith
James Diaz, editor of Anti Heroine Chic
Ellen Bass, The Human Line
M.T. Vallarda, Harbor Review
Kay Iver
Mary Jo Bang, Elegy
Lois P. Jones
Rumi, the Guest House
Sonia Greenfield