I move back and forth. The Tribe book is easier. I have a proposal and a plan for that, so it’s easier to know when that’s done because there’s a hard end. There’s a certain amount of chapters, and that whole thing. But poetry books, at least in my experience, those tell you when they’re done. My first book told me when it was done. It told me when I had mined everything I could out of the emotional landscape I was trying to create, and it pointed me to an exit strategy. With poetry books, I have been lucky to have my poems do that. My poems tell me how they want to live in the world, when they want to live in the world, and when they’re done being played with… Sometimes, it’s over the course of a month with one poem, or sometimes it takes a little longer than that. I think the hard work is knowing when to pull yourself back so you don’t overextend or let your projects blend together.

I don’t know the answer to that, especially with projects like Seat Assignment or Sorted Books, because both do still feel ongoing. The Sorted Books Project is my longest ongoing project to date, where I’m working in libraries or book collections with other people’s books and trying to work only with what’s there, to draw something out from the book arrangements I make.

It’s funny you say that because I never have this moment when I feel, “Ah, I’ve finished!” I watch footballers at the end of the match, you know, the whistle goes and they’ve won or lost. Until then they’ve been giving everything and at that moment they know it’s over. It’s funny for an author. There’s never a finishing whistle. It’s not very spectacular.

It’s so weird. I feel like that’s so tough. You just know, you do. I feel like if I could explain that, I’d probably be better at writing songs or something. If I knew the trick to it, then I would just do it every time and just always land the dismount. I don’t think that every song I write is the song, but it’s part of the practice of staying in your expression and your expressiveness and just trying to find the nerve and hit the nerve well every time. You know when you hit the nerve, it’s like hitting a funny bone or on your knee when they’re doing the reflex thing at the doctor. It’s like you just know when you hit it and you know when you’re not hitting it.