I’m grateful for this moment and each day I’m trying to breathe through it so I really appreciate the gift of this bizarre and amazing thing. This has been the biggest honor of my life and it’s hard to believe it’s true. Then, I got up and had to go get my work done like any other day but, as you can imagine, I could barely write a sentence without buzzing. I had tears streaming down my face and then I just crawled into bed and let myself sort of cry it out. So this sort of public recognition is rather earth shattering. We secretly love poems, and quietly doing the work alone. I mean, as poets, this is not something we’re used to, right? We’re used to plugging away, keeping our head down, doing our day jobs without anyone noticing that And after I hung up and was alone for a little while, I actually started crying. I shouted so loud and told my partner and then my Mom. The following conversation took place with poet Sarah Green over email.Ĭongratulations on being named a finalist for the National Book Award!Ĭan you tell us about how you found out, and what your reaction was? She has contributed essays and articles to a variety of publications, such as Oxford American, Guernica, Poetry, and American Poetry Society. Her poems have appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, and American Poetry Review among other publications.

Ada Limón is the author of Bright Dead Things (Milkweed 2015), a current finalist for the 2015 National Book Award, as well as three previous collections, L ucky Wreck (Autumn House Press 2006), This Big Fake World (Pearl Editions 2006), and Sharks in the Rivers (Milkweed Editions 2010).

Bright dead things