From TikTok phenomenon Whitney Hanson, a brand-new collection of poems exploring the cadences of love, loss, grief, and healing But I wish Whitney the best and can’t see if she will develop her talent! The message is beautiful, of course, it’s about heartbreak and healing, but I feel like this wasn’t it. I’ve learned the power of vulnerability. I feel like I grew up always hiding my feelings and that’s probably why I ended up writing them all down. I never understood how important it is to be vulnerable with people. It connects you to the whole world to be vulnerable with other people.” Do you find it harder to write when you’re not going through a difficult/emotional experience? I think one thing that really helps me is doing flow of consciousness writing. So that is when you just write exactly what you are thinking. Sometimes that just turns into something and sometimes it doesn’t, that’s okay too. You’re not a machine to just produce inspiration. Inspiration comes and then you create something so don’t force yourself to write something. It doesn’t have to be perfection every time you put pen to paper.” What is the story behind the title of your first book Home?

And this book, as much as I wanted to like it, I really couldn't. It was just boring and disappointing. I feel that it's just the second version of "Home", which I also read, but that one I wouldn't even call poetry - it was more like a diary and love advices, than poems. it is hard to see the line between I care for you and I will put your needs before mine until my feet are blistered from racing to catch you every time you fallStormy is when the storms are unleashed within you. This section is sadness and heartbreak that accompanies lost love.Foggy is about losing your identity. The storm may have passed, but after heart break we often go through a process of redefining ourself.Sunny is a glimpse of joy and new love. It is the feeling of butterflies in your heart and sun on your skin. Climate is a reminder that all of the weather we encounter creates this beautiful experience that is life. It is a section of appreciation for both the rainy and sunny days.“ What is something you learned about yourself after writing these two books? The only constant in life is change. Climate is a journey in embracing change both internally and externally. It guides you through all the weather you face. From heartbreak to the storms you create inside your brain, Climate reminds you to embrace the sun, storm, and rain. Most importantly, it emphasizes the beauty, value, and consistency of change. Details e-book Climate I think poetry has always been something that’s really natural for me. I have ADHD so I feel like my thoughts kind of come in small bursts of inspiration rather than one novel of inspiration. And so I think that’s part of the reason that poetry comes more naturally to me. But, it wasn’t something I was really pursuing. Being an author wasn’t something that had been a life goal for me. It was a side passion project that I always worked on, It was a way of coping with things. It became this thing where I don’t really know how I got here.” What is your favorite book?

The way her words harmonized with my soul, this book has become my favorite poetry book I have ever read. Hands down! (and I’ve read a decades worth.) I started writing poetry specifically around sixteen-years-old. I read a book by Rupi Kaur and that gave me the perspective that poetry could be anything I wanted it to be. It gave me a lot of freedom to put my thoughts on paper. That was something that was inspiring for me, but I always loved to write.” Is poetry the literary genre that you have always wanted to take part in when writing? I guess this wasn’t just my cup of tea. I wish there was mention that it’s not only poetry BUT ALSO quotes / poetry prose, because one sentence is not poetry for me. This collection also does an amazing job of using metaphors throughout the pieces. The collection has a clear theme of using weather metaphors and figurative language that begins from the title and the cover art. While each poem doesn’t mention weather specifically, there is often at least a connection that can be made between the topic at hand and some sort of weather. The figurative language also lends itself so well to the imagery she can create in these pieces. She takes intangible things like emotions and turns them into tangible things like weather. One reason why I love poetry is because it can do things with words that some other works just can’t do. I think that the topics in which she chose and the language she used to present them do just that. I am incredibly impressed by what she can accomplish in this collection. From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of milk and honey and the sun and her flowers comes her greatly anticipated third collection of poetry.

unfortunately I didn't enjoy this book half as much as I expected. I discovered the author through her insta posts and I really enjoyed the poems I heard there unfortunately the ones I already knew also were the ones I liked the most in this book and the rest couldn't keep up. When I started writing it I was lost in so many areas of my life. I had just gotten out of a romantic relationship, so I was in a really rough spot with heartbreak. But I was also really unsure of my direction in life, what I was pursuing, and unsure of who I am. I think part of that was going to college and having to redefine my identity on my own terms. Homewas kind of me finding myself again after all that I’d been through. That’s why I titled it Home.“ How did your writing process change after your first book was published? but every time i saw the ships i forgot about the light. i dove headfirst into the sea and swam to save their life. my biggest fear is that we were meant to be. what if we were wrong, and we missed out on all the ways we were supposed to love each other. what if timing and space was just an excuse that we used to separate two hearts that beat simultaneously. maybe we are going to live the rest of our lives watching the wrong story unfold.”

sometimes love isn’t the fall. It is the time you spend sitting on the edge of the cliff learning each others souls.”i know i should have turned the light on, i know i should have taken their advice, but i don’t know what love is if it is not sacrifice.” i drowned us both in the process; the ships never found the shore. i ended up helping less when i meant to be helping more. So, withHomeI kind of reimagined the body and the self as a beehive. All of these emotions like anxiety, loss, and heartbreak are the bees. Some days the bees are very unsettled and some days they’re not. WithClimateI wanted to do something similar, but this time I reimagined the mind as weather patterns. Climate has four different sections: “Stormy,” “Foggy,” Sunny,” and “Climate.” The idea is just that all of these different types of weather make up the climate, in your mind and body. The point of the book is that the sunny days are just as important as the rainy days. All of it is a balance.“ What do the four parts in Climate represent? I enjoy how this book seems to have a clear relatable voice while touching on tough topics and also having extremely poetic elements. It is almost like reading a diary of her life experiences that she just so happened to turn into poems but they also feel so intentional as well. Sometimes with poetry, I have seen that authors focus too much on the language sounding pretty but they don’t say anything (at least that I can understand as a person reading for entertainment without deconstructing each line which is what some of the poets want, it just is not my favorite form of poetry so my opinion is a little bias). Whitney Hanson can create such amazing pieces that while sounding poetic and beautiful, have a voice that is easy to understand and wants to say something to the reader. She uses simple word choice overall, which blows my mind because I always try to “sound like a poet” when I write. This collection shows that you don’t always need “big fancy words” to create good works, even though she does have great use of word choice throughout her pieces. She wants the reader to relate and be able to feel what she is saying in her work. I believe that the voice she chose allows for that throughout her collection. i think when they told me to save people with my light, i mistook their words and tried to save people with my life.