Hi, Kaitlinn! To start off, can you please briefly introduce yourself to our audience?
Where are you from? What kind of art do you create? (and whatever else you’d like to share…)
Are there any artists or writers that you’re loving at the moment? Share and explain.
Warsan Shire has been my obsession for the past few months. I also picked up Ocean Vuong’s Night Sky with Exit Wounds a few weeks ago and I’m falling badly in love with his poetry. There’s a way that he is able to draw me in and rip me wide open in a way I haven’t in a very long time.
(Optional): Provide links to your website, social media, or other places where readers can connect with you. (3 links max)
Interview
with Kaitlinn Rose Estevez
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GS&NS: Hi, Kaitlinn. Please introduce yourself to our readers.
Kaitlinn: I am from Queens, New York and I write poetry. I also started to really love writing essays as well and have been venturing off in creative non-fiction.
GS&NS: I loved your poem, “No. 1”, and especially appreciated the strength of the final two lines: “If only she knew what she was linked to,
that her tiny coast hugs onto the tip of a kingdom.” Why end the poem with those lines?
Kailtlinn: I think I have always struggled with selling myself short, or even hiding parts of myself that I didn’t think would be accepted or embraced by others. I’m always forgetting that potential within me -and forgetting all the knowledge, wisdom, and power I am connected to. Ending with that just allows me to look forward with immense hope and courage, and it’s a way to depict a vastness in that kingdom that cannot be described. I want the reader to imagine that kingdom for themselves, what it means to them.
GS&NS: Who/what were you writing to in “No. 1”? What was your source of inspiration?
Kaitlinn: There was a way in which the poem was examining myself -looking introspectively and trying to verbalize the things about myself no one actually sees. This poem also signifies the beginning of me finally sharing my poetry. I decided to finally share my poetry regularly, so I put together a collection numbered 1-50 and it’s the first poems I sent out and even performed sometimes. So this being No. 1 is showing the first step I took in really being open about my art and about who I am.
GirlSense and NonSense