I had fun talking poetry with Geoff Anderson, a friend and fellow Cave Canem poet. Geoff is on a mission to democratize making a living from poetry (my words, not his.) As a craft talk, the idea of space activation came to mind. Technically space activation is a term used by space planners; it is the process of turning underutilized or vacant space into an inventive socially engaging public space. In my mind poets are doing a similar thing when a line break or prose block isn’t enough to say what the poem wants to say. It is space activation, the transformation of negative into positive space beyond a line that can transform words and punctuation into a visual poem, erasure poem, blackout poem, footnote poem, or in the case of Pulitzer Prize finalist Douglas Kearney take the poem where no poem has gone before…