THE BACKSTORY

in twntytwntyone, shantia was coming up on the end of their time teaching in the durango juvenile detention center here in phoenix. in the hope of sharing some of their own stories with their students, shantia decided to compile this chapbook of nine poems. though they had been writing from a young age and performed their poems for a short time in high school, shantia had not yet had their own poems in a shareable, printed form. and so this chapbook, made for the sake of gratitude and reciprocal vulnerability, served as a special debut!

while originally shantia and i worked together to make a handful of copies for their students, we soon realized that we had underestimated how many we needed to print. and so we ended up doing two initial runs, each of 81 books, for a total of 162 copies. since shantia centered the number nine in this collection, we wanted to honor it in the design [see the cover, the spirals, the circular figure of nine nines, etc.] and also in the number of copies for the initial print runs [9x9=81 // 8+1=9 // 1+6+2=9]. we hope this resonance carries through.

importantly, this chapbook was assembled with the help of friends! in the words of shantia's maternal elders: "many hands make a heavy load light". -- RG