TtD supplement #298 : six questions for Sunnylyn Thibodeaux

Sunnylyn Thibodeaux is the author of five full length collections of poetry, as well as over a dozen small books including Witch Like Me from the Operating System. She is a teacher, neighborhood activist and tree enthusiast. She is the mother of a Scorpio and wife of a poet and splits her time between San Francisco and New Orleans. In 2026 City Lights will publish her selected poems.

Her poems “Signs of Life,” “Mailbox Full,” “I am Without” and “Rent Control” appear in the forty-eighth issue of Touch the Donkey.

Q: Tell me about the poems “Signs of Life,” “Mailbox Full,” “I am Without” and “Rent Control.”

A: Those poems are each their own in such a way, but also stepping back and looking at them I realize I can actually split them into two categories. 

“Rent Control” and “Signs of Life” were written with the setting of San Francisco. “Rent Control” being a sort of list poem history of the building that we've lived in since 2006. 

“Signs of Life” was an intake of my walk home through the Mission District. By that moment in May walking home from SF International High School where I had been working I knew I was leaving the city for New Orleans. I was taking everything in, the beauty, the desperation, the humanity, the culture. That intersection is always bustling. It’s a busy transit corner with 3 bus lines that traverse the city and the BART underground. There are lots of commuters and drug deals, panhandlers and street vendors. That poem is basically a word photograph capturing things that are gorgeous and personable and things that are less than ideal.

“I am Without” and “Mailbox Full” are both poems wrestling with grief. When my mother passed I think the world fell into a haze of bodily movement without being present or aware and I recall sitting on the sofa and just staring at the rug, recognizing that it really needed to be vacuumed, but I was numb and so so sad and seeing all the little bits of everything just made the hurt of missing my mom more real and I just sat sedated in grief. I don't even know how a poem came out in that period of my life. Recollection is spotty. 
“Mailbox Full” was a voicemail I seriously wanted to leave for my dear friend Duncan McNaughton when I called him just as he returned home from the hospital and his mailbox was full.

Q: How does these poems compare to some of the other work you’ve been doing lately?

A: Well first of all the grief, while still present, is not as crippling. Observation has always been a part of my writing and I can’t imagine that specifically going away so I think that I could end up continuously writing like any of those poems. Those list poems happen periodically as well as the prose block poems. I have never been one to set out with a project in poetry to where I could say, “This is my plan or this is the style I intend to achieve.” The poem wants what the poem wants, and I can’t always answer for how it comes out.

Q: You mention the word “setting” when describing these poems. Is setting an important factor in the way you approach a poem?

A: Yes and no. Setting is the now, the actual moment of orchestration. It is the presence of itself that allows for the writing to come. Setting, in this sense, is not what we think of in that formal regard as we approach the learning of literature. But also with that said, a place, as in “Signs of Life,” can be everything to the poem. It is more a being present that is important. And being present can also mean being present in memory. It may all find its place in the poem. Not sure if this makes sense. Poetry is almost like a meditation. It’s not where you physically are, but how you open yourself to receive.

Q: Do you have any models for the kinds of work you’ve been attempting? What writers or works sit at the back of your head as you write?

A: To be honest, I attempt nothing. What happens happens.

I will say, hands down, Philip Whalen. Also, Nathaniel Mackey’s lyric is a tune I sometimes find myself humming.

Q: With a handful of published collections over the years, as well as your current works-in-progress, how do you feel your work has progressed? Where do you see your work heading? And with that, given you’ve a selected poems forthcoming, has the experience of seeing that process through shifted or expanded your perspective on what you’ve been attempting?

A: I think it’s interesting when you recognize that you’ve settled into yourself, though one should never get comfortable. I recognize my tendency to observe. I also recognize my tendency to interweave reflection. Isn’t that what poetry is? Like that age old advice of “write what you know,” but what we know has to come through a sense of grounding, observation, an intuition. It is not about actually using your head in this matter.

Putting together a selected, I can see that I’ve been writing about some form of nature all of my adult life and the moon is a pretty frequent character. I’m not sure that’s ever gonna change. It’s interesting that you reference what I’ve “been attempting.” I don’t actually attempt anything outside of observing. It’s what I think I work hardest at. We have to sit still to do this and Lord knows this world does not encourage stillness.

Q: Finally, who do you read to reenergize your own work? What particular works can’t you help but return to?

A: For song and rhythm, Nathaniel Mackey. For interpersonal connection and reflection, Lou Welch. For grounding in the real life world spin, Philip Whalen. For a pragmatic view of concise awareness, Lorine Niedecker. To learn, Duncan McNaughton.