Humbled to have been in conversation with Nathaniel Mackey and Abigail Chabitnoy in the 46th annual Writers Week Festival at UC Riverside. We shared story about the musicality of language, the power of release, how to cultivate the will to persist in the lyric mode, and, in the words of Nathaniel Mackey, how we can heal the “damage to sound” through poetry. Mahalo nui loa.