India, Aug. 15 -- 1What drew you so deeply to birds while writing this collection? Of all the creatures we share the planet with, birds seem to me utterly unknowable. Most birds occupy the realm of sky, and this wingedness is a marvel. My obsession with birds has developed from mild curiosity to full-on mania over the past decade, and I've found they've increasingly made their way into my poems. I'm always frustrated by my inability to retain information about them. No amount of swotting up on bird guides has allowed me to be able to name and identify more than some 20 varieties. So, I am resigned to being an entry-level birder. But I guess as a poet, my interest in birds is primarily mythic and totemic. What they represent, how they can be symbol, premonition, witness, warning. How they connect the past, the present and the future. I'm glad someone is decoding the mysteries of birdsong and trying to figure out why they fly in a V formation or murmuration. For myself, I will read these articles with awe, and then a bird will fly into my sightline, and into a poem. 2Writing about issues such as war, climate loss and extinction feels urgent right now. What can a poem do that other forms of writing cannot? I'm not sure how to answer that. I think we choose the form that contains what we need to express and, for me, that form is predominantly the poem. Poetry has an elasticity that is capacious, and is also untethered and valiant in ways that activism or journalism can't be, because they are so tethered to noble ideas like truth and justice. Poems can also truck in truth and justice, but they can also be about none of that. 3What gives you hope or keeps you writing when facing environmental destruction, war and personal losses? Are there particular poems in this book that felt especially vital to write? I struggle with the idea of hope because I think there is a design of falsity in the construction of it. So many times, the people and institutions peddling hope are the ones behind the horror. I know there are a few times in my life when I have felt real despair, and aside from the deep emotional pit of it, it was also this large blanket of inertia swaddled around me, the inability to do anything, and in hindsight, the inaction was the most terrifying aspect of it. So, I guess what gives me hope is action, to be able to do something - whether it is protest or nurture. Whether it is simply the ability to imagine something other than what is deemed to be the only possibility. Writing a poem can be a hugely optimistic act. It may not be able to alter reality in a measurable way, but it has the power to land inside another person and take up residence, which is its own kind of magic....