Jeanine Walker, poet and musician, relates how her parents’ divorce when she was 10 has shaped her poetry. She explores family, bonding, separation, and escape in several poems containing her own experiences or imaginings of different lives. Poetry allows her to explore her own experiences and create deeper understanding of the changes in her and her family’s life.

In Divorce, the central poem of her upcoming manuscript, Jeanine captures the moment where her parents told her family of their divorce, how both parents, the children, and their home are affected by the words finally spoken aloud: “The house stood still like a horse. Big eyes ablink. In the unknowing few moments before a shot . . .”

Music by St. Helens String Quartet, produced as part of the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.