Rachel Zucker speaks with poet Aracelis Girmay about creating new forms and structures, employing fragments, the time it takes to get to urgent questions, research, patience, appreciating snails with Kamau Brathwaite, menarche, estrangement, pregnancy, naming, our fathers and families, worrying about doing harm in poems, effort, June Jordan, Ross Gay, writing about family, history, avoiding and countering the language of violence and brutality, writing long poems and find ways to express anger and rage without adopting the language of tyranny and oppression.