I never wanted to write about the self and, for the most part, refused to yield to that impulse. But while writing this collection, I tried to adhere to the saying ‘write what you know.” Still, I was chronically conscious of the easiness of injecting too much self into the collection – not that there is anything wrong with self-expression or autobiographical poetry. With this being my first collection, I felt somewhat reserved. But the more I tried to push back against the desire to divulge, the more I found myself caving in until I discovered a counterbalance – a way to elude that temptation. To be sure, each poem starts with a memory, then an image, which is played out like a scene in a moment of something I feel could be exploited. Each poem in Coco Island takes on this approach: something borrowed and something given.