Sol A.: Your chapbook, Grief. Road Alone. Shared Paths is deeply personal. What inspired you to write it?
E.K. Mitsunaga: The poems came from a place of silence—moments when grief left me wordless. Writing became a way to listen to that silence and slowly give it shape. I didn’t set out to write a chapbook. I just followed the voice of grief until it became something I could offer to others.
Sol A.: The structure of the book is unique, with each section introduced by a poem. Why did you choose that format?
E.K. Mitsunaga: Grief isn’t linear. Each section represents a different emotional terrain, and the intro poems are like trail markers. They help the reader pause, reflect, and prepare for what’s ahead. I wanted the book to feel like a companion, not a lecture.
Sol A.: Many of your poems seem to carry the weight of unsaid things — pauses, glances, moments that never found words. How do you decide what to leave unsaid in your writing?
E.K. Mitsunaga: Sol, I try not to write poetry in a way that says, this is my experience — see if you can match it. Instead, I try to evoke a non-invasive reflection of my experience so the reader can feel something stirring deep within themselves. If the feelings align, then our connection becomes We. That’s the quiet power of poetry. It doesn’t demand recognition but offers resonance.
Sol A.: You’ve described grief as a voice you followed. Was there a moment when that voice shifted — from silence to something more like guidance?
E.K. Mitsunaga: I remember doing some filing after moving from the West Coast to the East Coast. I came across old folders marked Parents and inside were two free verse poems I had written for each of them for their funerals. Months later, I realized I hadn’t written anything about my wife and her passing. The pain was still deep within me — silent, unspoken.
As my short stories began to shrink into flash fiction, I found myself writing even shorter forms: poetry. And in that quiet space, I felt something shift. The need to express my grief became undeniable, and poetry became my path to healing.
Now, this chapbook exists — not just to express my grief, but to share it with those who feel alone in theirs. That voice I followed through silence has become something I can offer. A guide, perhaps. Or simply a companion on the road.
Sol A.: The title, Grief. Road Alone. Shared Paths., suggests both solitude and connection. How do you balance those two forces in your poems — the deeply personal and the quietly communal?
E.K. Mitsunaga: In my title, Grief is the pain of losing someone dear to us — whether it’s in the past, the now, or what is to come. Road Alone is our one and only road, where our life begins and ends. It’s the solitary existence we each have and cannot share. But it’s the Shared Paths we take from our Road that allow for communal sharing — of laughter, sadness, and comfort with others. The balance of both is Grief: where, on our Road Alone, the pain of loss cannot be shared. But on our Shared Paths, our grief is shared — spoken or unspoken.
Sol A.: Your creative process seems to blend technical precision with emotional intuition. Can you share a moment when a formatting challenge or device setup unexpectedly led to a new poetic insight?
E.K. Mitsunaga: In some of my poems, I write lines with the rhythm built for an on-air narrator. It’s a habit from my earlier work in television and radio commercials — listening for cadence, knowing where a breath would fall, shaping the emotional arc of a sentence so it lands with clarity and feeling. Those experiences taught me to hear rhythm not just as sound, but as emotional timing.
But not all of my poems follow that structure. Some resist it entirely. Each piece teaches me how it wants to be read and or heard — whether through steady pacing, fragmented silence, or irregular breath. I don’t impose rhythm; I discover it. That balance between technical instinct and poetic intuition is where the real voice of the poem emerges.
Sol A.: What do you hope a reader feels after finishing the last poem — not just about grief, but about their own path?
E.K. Mitsunaga: At the beginning pages of my chapbook, I wrote a poem, Before Our First Step. And my message to the reader is that if they connect with any of my poems throughout this book, they will know that they are not alone in grief.
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Thank you for walking this path with us. If you’ve already read Grief. Road Alone. Shared Paths., I hope this conversation deepens your connection to the poems and the silences between them. And if you’re arriving here before reading the book, perhaps something in these reflections will invite you to explore it. Grief is a solitary road, silent. And sometimes, shared words become shared paths.
—Sol A.
E.K. Mitsunaga 