Sarah Marcus-Donnelly: A Wilderness begins with an essential self-awareness. You write, “I put a horse in the poem.” And, in the penultimate stanza of the opening poem, you continue with an introspective narrator: “Who was the “I” who wore a white dress and did/ as she was told?” I feel like your speaker grounds each poem in the tangible. How do you see the narrator’s progression throughout the book? Stephanie Cawley: For a long time, I have been very interested in the idea o

Sarah Marcus-Donnelly: A Thirst for Salt is a love letter to someone lost and the pleasure of beginnings. What I found so interesting was the insight into the lover, the “you.” There’s a context and history given to her that we are so rarely privy to when the “I” is suffering. The book questions our ability to have something or someone “forever”—maybe even the value of it. Can you talk to us about permanence (or lack thereof) and how it functions in this work? Hannah Leffingw