Every book begins long before it reaches a reader. It begins with someone willing to read closely, make difficult choices, shape the work with care, and believe that one more voice deserves a place in the world.

In this episode, Enzo sits down with poet, editor, and publisher Rebecca Hart Olander to pull back the curtain on small press publishing and the heart-labor that makes each book possible. They talk about the difficult choices behind saying yes to a manuscript, what writers misunderstand about the editing process, and the many unseen hands that shape the books that eventually shape us.

The conversation also moves through the delicate balance of being both poet and publisher, writing through grief, protecting room for one’s own creative life, and continuing to bring meaningful work into the world during a changing climate of censorship and uncertainty.

This is a conversation for writers, editors, publishers, and anyone who has ever wondered what it truly takes to turn a manuscript into a book someone can hold.

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In this episode of It’s a Poetic Life, Enzo sits down with poet, educator, and Salem Poet Laureate J.D. Scrimgeour for a conversation about poetry, place, mentorship, language, and literary community.

Together, they reflect on the poetic life as something shaped not only by what we write, but by the spaces we help create for others. From Salem’s literary history and the Mass Poetry Festival to questions of family, translation, teaching, and community building, this conversation explores how poetry can live on the page, in the classroom, in the city, and in the relationships that sustain us.

At its heart, this episode is about what it means to keep showing up for the work, for the people, and for the communities that make a literary life possible.

What happens when care starts to feel harder to read?

In this episode of It’s a Poetic Life, I sit with a feeling I haven’t been able to shake: the sense that empathy is still present, but the way we encounter it has started to shift.

From the language we absorb online to the way it follows us into real conversations and onto the page, I explore how care can become tangled with being seen, being affirmed, or being rewarded, and what that does to the way we trust each other.

This isn’t a callout. It’s a conversation.

A reflection on empathy, performance, mentorship, creative community, and the quiet work of remaining human with one another, even in the stories we tell and the characters we create.

At the center of the episode is a question I’m still carrying:

What does empathy look like when no one is watching?

And how do we keep choosing presence in a world that often rewards performance?

In practice, not perfection.