“Letter to My Thirteen-Year-Old Self”
Collaborators’ Q&A: Poet Benjamin S. Grossberg: It’s only in the last few years that I’ve gained enough distance from my teenage self to really understand how deeply I was shaped by the violently homophobic society in which I grew up: 1970s and ‘80s New Jersey. Artist Douglas Culhane: The imagery in the poem relates darkness, accumulation, and secrecy. I think that I was responding more to the fact of the poem, which is an act of clarity and compassion.
Benjamin S. Grossberg’s latest book, My Husband Would (University of Tampa, 2020), won the 2021 Connecticut Book Award. Artist Douglas Culhane works in sculpture and drawing. He has exhibited in New York and New England and he teaches art at Amherst College.
