Poetry as an act of writing demands a sensibility for contemplation that is often drowned out in our information overload culture. Billy Collins said that poets are people who get paid to look at clouds and watch chipmunks, because someone has to keep an eye on these things. Why is physical relationship with nature important for writing? Are we living in a cottage-core trend in which poets are leaving bohemian urban centres to connect with the local communities of their childhood? Why are teenagers on TikTok obsessed with Kafka? These questions are explored by poets Dr Paige Quiñones and Frank Keizer in conversation with Dr Mitja Drab. Dr Paige Quiñones is the author of The Best Prey, which received the 2020 Pleiades Press Lena Miles-Wever Todd Prize for Poetry. She has received awards and fellowships from the Center for Mexican-American Studies, the Academy of American Poets and Inprint Houston. She earned her MFA from the Ohio State University and her PhD from the University of Houston, where her doctoral thesis explored confessionalism in 20th century American poetry. Frank Keizer is a poet and essayist from the Netherlands. He is the author of five books of poetry, an editor at the Flemish literary magazine nY, co-founder of the online magazine Samplekanon and co-host of the literary criticism podcast Links Richten. His latest book, titled The Introduction of the Plot is an adventurous exercise in collective thinking about ‘how can we stop the capitalist exploitation of our bodies and the Earth?’