Best of Design Matters: Ada Limón

Design Matters with Debbie Millman

In this episode of Design Matters, Debbie Millman interviews Ada Limón, the 2.4th U.S. Poet Laureate, about her journey into poetry. The co

Key takeaways

• Ada Limón views her experience of growing up in two separate households not as a 'broken home' but as an expansion of family.
• The death of her stepmother served as a pivotal moment that drove her to pursue poetry as a full-time vocation.
• Limón describes her time working in marketing for brands like GQ and Martha Stewart as a period of being 'in service' rather than a primary creative outlet.
• She identifies the concept of 'joy' as a potential superpower in writing, challenging the notion that all good poetry must stem from suffering.
• As Poet Laureate, Limón approached her role through the lens of public service and providing a 'secular sacred language' for gathering.

Main topics

• Poetic Craft and Form
• Childhood Identity
• Navigating Loss

Notable quotes

I thought of it as it expanded.

Conclusion

The episode offers a profound meditation on how art provides a contain

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) This episode of Design Matters originally appeared in March of 2026. Speaker 5 (0:05) Sometimes they come out backwards. Sometimes they come out almost done. And I realize I've been writing it for a long time. And so by the time I got to the page, it's complete. And then sometimes it takes me months, even years, to finish a poem. Speaker 3 (0:25) From the TED Audio Collective, this is Design Matters with Debbie Millman. Speaker 3 (0:33) On Design Matters, Debbie talks with some of the most creative people in the world about what they do, how they got to be who they are, and what they're thinking about and working on. On this episode, a conversation with Ada Limon about how she became a poet and the power of poetry to bring people together. Speaker 5 (0:50) Oh, there are other people that feel this way. Speaker 2 (1:01) Support comes from WISE, the smart way to manage the currencies you need around the world. Your life is global. Your money should be too. Some providers promise no fees on overseas transfers. Don't be fooled. Extra costs often hide in bloated exchange rates. Choose WISE. You can send, spend and receive money in over 40 currencies. Count on the exchange rates that you'd usually see on Google. That's how millions save billions on hidden fees. Be smart. Get WISE. Visit WISE.com. How Speaker 4 (1:33) do you build a career you're proud of? It's easy to get caught up in the impact you hope to have or the legacy you want to leave behind. But how much of that is actually within your control? Something that I believe is that legacy is totally out of your control. Like legacy is something that other people determine. But what is in your control is contribution and your actions around that. I really grew up, you know, into my 20s, maybe even 30s, thinking that, that like, if I didn't do something that meaningful and important, then like, I hadn't done something worthwhile. Find out how to build a career you're proud of in this episode of my podcast, Work Life, featuring actress and director Bryce Dallas Howard. And don't worry, we'll get into the Neppo baby conversation. I'm Molly Graham, and you can find Work Life, a podcast from TED, wherever you listen. Speaker 6 (2:31) Ada Limon is the author of seven books of poetry, including The Carrying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Bright Dead Things, a finalist for the National Book Award. Her most recent poetry collection is Startlement, New and Selected Poems. In 2022, Ada was named the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States. She served in that role for three years, bringing poetry into classrooms, libraries, and national parks across the country. Her many honors include a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and she was named one of Time Magazine's Women of the Year in 2024 for being an extraordinary leader who was working toward a more equal world. Her brand new book is titled Against Breaking. on the power of poetry. Ada Limon, welcome to Design Matters. Speaker 5 (3:29) Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Speaker 6 (3:32) Ada, you grew up in Glen Ellyn in Sonoma Valley, across from the Calabasas Creek, in a landscape of hills, horses, and open land. Yet your pet of choice was a mouse you named Fred. Speaker 5 (3:52) Yes, I did have a mouse named Fred. Tell us how you came to own Fred. You know, when my parents were divorcing, the nice thing about having a mouse is that you could carry the cage back and forth. And so for me, Fred was perfect because he was portable and he could come with me to each house. That was important for me to be able to bring my mouse. Speaker 6 (4:20) Little mouse back and forth. Speaker 5 (4:21) Your Speaker 6 (4:22) grandfather emigrated from San Juan de los Lagos in Mexico during the Mexican Revolution and worked hard to assimilate in the United States. And I'm wondering, has that family history influenced you think about heritage and cultural identity? Speaker 5 (4:41) Yeah, I mean, I think it's hard not to live in the United States without thinking about cultural heritage and identity. I think that... You know, for me, I not only think about his journey and how proud he was of his American citizenship, but also how he struggled to make it in this country. And I find his journey to be both inspirational and a little hard sometimes because he was a very prideful person. And there are times where I know how much he was holding in. That's something that is a little bit of a family legacy there. Speaker 6 (5:30) Your childhood included long stretches of solitude, walking creeks, watching animals, and you spent a lot of time outdoors. And as I was reading about your childhood and the ways in which you engaged with the world, I was wondering, were you lonely? Speaker 5 (5:48) I don't know if I was lonely. I don't know if I've ever been lonely. I like to be alone. It's important to me to be alone. I think that I miss people. I miss specific people, but I don't think I was lonely. I think I was sometimes isolated, sometimes felt separate, and maybe had a sense of longing. But I don't think I was lonely. What Speaker 6 (6:22) were you longing for? Speaker 5 (6:23) I think I was longing for a way to connect with the strangeness that I felt. the surreality of being alive in a body. And I didn't have words for it. And everyone else seemed to be able to function in a way that felt very... Speaker 5 (6:46) I don't want to use the word normal, but it felt as if everyone had the perfect way to move in the world. And for me, I felt like there was always this moment where I wanted to shout, like, isn't this bizarre? Speaker 6 (7:02) And Speaker 5 (7:03) I think I still feel that way. And so even as a child, I felt like at any moment I was going to break out and start shouting. Isn't it so strange to be alive? And where do we come from? And where are we going? And what is this about? And how are we supposed to pretend that this human experience is not deeply strange and otherworldly and in many ways overwhelming? Speaker 6 (7:34) You just described my mood perfectly, Speaker 5 (7:37) especially these Speaker 6 (7:39) days. Yeah. You mentioned that your parents got divorced when you were very young. You were eight years old. And you described your childhood as living in two households with very different environments. One where your dad was a school principal and your stepmother a speech pathologist. And one where your mother was an artist and your stepdad worked in restaurants. And Speaker 5 (8:03) there's Speaker 6 (8:04) a poem you wrote called Before. Speaker 5 (8:06) that Speaker 6 (8:07) I was wondering if you would read that described your life before your parents got divorced. Speaker 5 (8:14) Yeah, I'd be happy to. Before. Speaker 5 (8:19) No shoes and a glossy red helmet, I rode on the back of my dad's Harley at seven years old. Before the divorce, before the new apartment, before the new marriage, before the apple tree, before the ceramics and the garbage, before the dog's chain, before the koi were all eaten by the crane, before the road between us, there was a road beneath us, and I was just big enough not to let go. Heno Road. Creek just below. Rough wind. Chicken legs. And I never knew survival was like that. If you live, you look back and beg for it again. The hazardous bliss before you know what you would miss. Thank you. Speaker 6 (9:07) How did growing up between those different households shape your understanding of identity and belonging? Speaker 5 (9:19) Yeah, I think that for anyone that has lived in two separate households and had two separate parent units, and there are so many of us, there is a natural adjustment that takes place where you learn to navigate. the two worlds. One house had different rules than the other. And whether it was even a dinner routine or something as simple as a bedtime or an after school routine, they were really quite different. And so I think that I learned, like most children do, to navigate those two worlds and figure out the ways in which I could feel at ease in both of them. My stepmother was very organized and was very much someone who was figuring out who she was in this relationship. She was quite young when she moved in. And so she had a list on the refrigerator that would list out the meals that we were all to make that. week. And so even as young as, you know, 10, my brother and I would have a night where we would make dinner and then they were pairings. So it would be, you know, one night dad and me, or one night Cyrus and Cynthia, and that would be on the fridge and it would be all the meals listed out for a week. And then, you know, imagine in the other household where my mom would just cook whatever it was that she was making. She would ask us what our favorites was, and oftentimes we didn't even do the dishes. And so we sort of melted in a messy way at my mom's house, and we were very, I would say, somewhat rigid in my father's house. And so we learned how to navigate that together, sometimes not so gracefully and sometimes with ease. Did you feel like the same person in both homes? No. Speaker 6 (11:28) How hard was it for you to go back and forth in your own sort of sense of self? Speaker 5 (11:33) Well, I think that, you know, I had Fred, so that helped. No, I think that I learned to figure out who I was and listen to the core of me. After a while, when I figured out the patterns that took shape, I also, like many children, struggled. where I found my temper ran hot at my father's house, and I found my emotions ran wild at my mother's house. And so I think that I was always trying to look for the right container for Speaker 6 (12:10) myself. You wrote a poem titled Joint Custody, which I believe was about the experience or certainly influenced by the experience. And I'm wondering if you would... share that with us now too. Speaker 5 (12:24) Yeah, you know, I was thinking about that experience and how for many people it feels as if, I don't know, there's either an evil stepmother or there's this idea of a broken home. I still remember there was a woman who, she pulled me aside at my elementary school and said, I'm so sorry that you're from a broken home now. And I remember thinking, I don't think you're allowed to say that to me. And I also remember thinking how strange it was that I didn't think of my home as broken. I thought of it as it expanded. Even though there were difficulties, I felt that I had these really intact parental units. And I kept thinking, I had never seen examples of that. In poems and literature and movies, it always seemed that if a family got divorced, that it was all disastrous. Speaker 6 (13:28) That Speaker 5 (13:29) was not my experience. It was difficult, but it wasn't disastrous. And I think that many years later during the pandemic, I was thinking about how much I missed my family. And when I said family in my head, of course, I was picturing. both my father and my new stepmother, and I was picturing my mother and my stepfather. And I thought, oh, isn't that sort of beautiful that that to me is immediately in my head? I had never really written about it in this way. And so this poem sort of came to me with the first line. Joint custody. Why did I never see it for what it was? Abundance. Two families, two different kitchen tables, two sets of rules, two creeks, two highways, two step-parents with their fish tanks or eight tracks or cigarette smoke or expertise in recipes or reading skills. I cannot reverse it. The record scratched and stopped to the original chaotic track. But let me say, I was taken back and forth on Sundays, and it was not easy, but I was loved each place. And so I have two brains now, two entirely different brains, the one that always misses where I'm not, and the one that is so relieved to finally be home. Speaker 6 (15:03) Thank you, Ada. It takes you so back into the place in between that it feels as if you wrote it while you were in transit. Yeah. You've said that even as a child, you felt a deep attachment to objects and elements of the natural world, rocks and leaves and small discoveries on the pathways you were walking. How did that instinct to hold on to the world first begin in your consciousness and then evolve into writing about it? Speaker 5 (15:38) What a wonderful question. I was always very attached to the world. I still am. I've always felt, I think in the beginning I was almost embarrassed by it. that it seemed like a strange thing to love a tree so much or to love a rock so much or to look out and love the world so much. And like I said, it felt like everyone else sort of moved around and they could keep their head down. And I couldn't stop looking and I couldn't stop being amazed. And I also felt as if I was very tender to the world. And I was always surprised that people could be, it seemed unhurt by things. I was a very sensitive child. I once said I was precocious, but I meant to say precocious. And instead I said I was precarious. And I still think about that. I still think that I, oh, I was a precarious child. Speaker 5 (16:49) But I think I was. I think there was this little sort of teetering that happened within me that felt like at any moment I was going to be sort of pulled over into a real emotional frenzy about whatever it was, whether it was good or bad. You know, that went with things that were exciting and things that were hard at the same time. So I think I remember finding poems and music. And thinking, oh, there are other people that feel this way. And there are other people that feel really deeply. And they sing about it. And they write about it. And they make paintings. And my mother was a painter. And I knew she saw things differently. And I was really lucky that I think I had parents. I think all four parents. who saw that, who didn't dismiss it. They took it seriously. They said, yeah, we understand. That's, it was okay. I feel really grateful for that because I remember thinking I may be, for the lack of a more nuanced word, crazy and thinking, you know, I feel like the world is moving through me and I feel really touched by everything and all these things. And I remember Separate times, my father saying, yeah, totally. I feel that way too. And my stepfather saying, oh yeah, no, I understand that. That was a gift. I don't think they've always 100 % understood me, but I think that not being dismissed for that kind of attachment or deep feeling felt really important. Speaker 6 (18:48) I read that as a teenager you experienced or had an experience of having a powerful realization that everyone you loved and you yourself would eventually die. Speaker 5 (19:03) Yeah. And Speaker 6 (19:05) this is a realization that has deeply stayed with you. Speaker 5 (19:10) Mm-hmm. Speaker 6 (19:11) Has that awareness shaped the way you write? Speaker 5 (19:16) I mean, doesn't it shape everything we do? Speaker 6 (19:20) I think once