I thought I might be too old to be an intern: I was several years post-MFA when I applied, and I needed a job, but I had thought about interning at Boa since college, when my advisor handed me a post-it with “Boa Editions” and “Writers & Books” written on it. Back then, I knew more about teaching than publishing—so, Writers & Books it was. Still, sometimes I thought about Boa as the path I could have taken, and the beginning of a totally different life I might have led. As an adjunct professor after grad school, when I dreamed about other things I might do, editor came to mind, but working in publishing seemed like a choice I needed to have already made: when I was twenty-two, or twenty-five, or anything other than thirty-three, the age I am now, and the age I was when I began my Boa internship during an especially frigid January. Nobody asked how old I was, of course—they just handed me an orientation folder and let me settle in. I spent most of the first day reading Lucille Clifton’s At the Gate, a collection I would write about for this blog in one of my favorite intern tasks. As I sat there reading, scribbling notes in a little tan notebook, I felt a kind of thawing: I was reinvigorated by Clifton’s work, and reminded how much I really want, and might actually need, to read poetry to feel alive and immersed in the world.
Poetry stayed within a fingertip’s reach throughout my internship at Boa—whether I was proofreading Canva-created slides to post on social media, pulling books from the shelves in the book room to mail out to readers, or combing through web sites detailing prize requirements to figure out which Boa writers might be eligible, I was always encountering scraps of stunning work. I was excited about the chance to try a lot of things while interning at Boa, and I did: I became more comfortable with platforms I had never or rarely used, like Canva, Asana, Excel, and Shopify, and I found new ways to challenge myself creatively while writing blog posts, creating captions for social media, or scoping out interesting spots to take photos within the old brick building housing Boa’s office and several artists’ studios, tilting a book cover to catch the light and framing it within my phone’s camera in hopes of capturing an intriguing image. I especially liked proofreading, not only for the chance to read a not-yet-released manuscript, but for a feeling similar to the one I had while preparing books for shipping: whether I was catching a missing em dash or peeling a shining gold 50th-anniversary sticker from its backing and smoothing it onto an envelope full of slim volumes of poetry, I liked getting things neatly packed up.
Boa is the rare kind of place where I have felt entirely right: there’s a writerly kind of attitude that I have encountered only a handful of times, and in a few places—a genuine, unpretentious feeling that I am among people who also know that writing and art can keep us all going, and might change everything about our lives for the better. I have felt so lucky to spend some time at Boa, and so grateful to Peter, Callie, and Justine for their gently encouraging style of mentorship, that I’m a little sad to move on; even though I’m glad to see spring, and the leaves coming back, and everything blooming, part of me wants to be back in the slushy parking lot, climbing the old steps to Boa’s office, huddled in my warmest winter coat behind the desk, comforted by the clanging radiators and winter light filtering through the tall windows, brightening everything up.
