{"id":313463,"date":"2026-07-14T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/electricliterature.com\/?p=313463"},"modified":"2026-07-20T13:23:01","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T17:23:01","slug":"coming-of-age-in-floridas-turbulent-waters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/electricliterature.com\/coming-of-age-in-floridas-turbulent-waters\/","title":{"rendered":"Coming of Age in Florida’s Turbulent Waters"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In Arielle Hebert\u2019s debut poetry collection Bottom Feeders<\/a><\/em>, Florida lures you in with long summer nights, oversized t-shirts and damp bikinis, trips to Publix for champagne and orange juice. There\u2019s a reason so many choose the Sunshine State for their vacations, but as Hebert points out, vacations here are quick to become trap doors: \u201cA whole town of trap doors \/ and someone always lost \/ on the other side.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n

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Bottom Feeders<\/em> explores Hebert\u2019s love for a state that\u2019s produced an opioid crisis and for those who struggled with that addiction. These two loves collapse into one another, becoming interchangeable objects of desire and destruction, the speaker too immersed in the damage to see a way out. Distance offers relief, a chance to catch her breath after living so long underwater, but it doesn\u2019t extinguish the pull.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like Hebert, I grew up in\u00a0Florida\u00a0<\/strong>and left for many of the reasons she depicts. While distance felt necessary at the time, Florida is a seductress, and after so many years I find myself questioning why I left\u2014even the humidity I once found so oppressive rewritten in my memory as a familiar comfort. This longing is palpable in Hebert as well, both in her collection and in our conversation. In our interview, I asked Hebert how she writes about disaster without falling back into its magic. Like she states in the collection, \u201cEverything we do \/ is self-preservation \/ or self-destruction,\u201d but how can you tell which is which? It\u2019s a question I asked as much for the readers\u2019 benefit as for my own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although states apart, I could feel our shared insatiability for the place we both left behind. Potted ferns decorated both our backgrounds as we talked over Zoom, her words pressed like fingers on a bruise: Painful, yes, but also a relief to be reminded that part of you is still there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sam Risak: Florida is often made into spectacle: the news stories, the memes, the mythology. Do you feel the state warrants this portrayal? Did you find yourself consciously writing toward it or against it?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arielle Hebert:<\/strong> I am hyper-aware of the ways that Florida is portrayed in the media, especially since I\u2019ve left the state and hear outsiders\u2019 perspectives. When I say, \u201cI\u2019m from Florida,\u201d it\u2019s received with a certain look, or a recognition of what they see portrayed in the media, whether that\u2019s Florida Man stories or, these days, about the political climate. But when I was writing the book, I tried to be aware of those preconceived notions about Florida and to write honestly toward my own experience. I tried to do a little bit of both leaning into and away from what folks might think they know about Florida.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SR: Taking the preconceived notions and complicating them?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

AH:<\/strong> Complicating them, interrogating them, and also trying to portray what I loved about Florida\u2014the flora and the fauna, the landscapes, the ocean, the swamps, all of it. It\u2019s such a beautiful place where complicated things happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SR: In <\/strong>Bottom Feeders<\/em><\/strong>, the opioid crisis functions as a structural backdrop to the personal narrative. Why was it important to put the state\u2019s conditions in conversation with the speaker\u2019s intimate life?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

AH:<\/strong> I didn\u2019t want it just to be about a breakup or a relationship. The time that the book is written about is my later years of high school and then the few years after graduation. So certainly adolescence and being a young adult. And during that time, there was so much happening that I really wanted that intertwined-ness to be present in the book. It wasn\u2019t just early love and early hurt or heartbreak. It was also exploring my sexuality and finding a group of friends to do that with that I felt safe and accepted by. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was also the height of the opioid epidemic, and that was certainly ever-present in all our lives whether it was in that friend group or outside of it. It touched everyone I knew, whether personally or [by] a few degrees of separation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then, going back to Florida as a place, erosion is ever-present. I lived on the coast\u2014the west coast of Florida in Sarasota\u2014and the beaches have been eroding since I moved there in 2000. So all these issues were swirling around each other, and I don\u2019t know if I could have written about only the personal or only the external factors. It seemed like they were all predicated on one another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SR: In \u201cHurricane Blues\u201d you write: \u201cWe treaded grief like water, \/ missed hurricanes in the off season, \/ when chaos ebbed enough \/ for us to see clearly, all the damage.\u201d It seemed like a parallel that runs throughout the collection: that both the speaker and the citizens of Florida are inclined to dwell in disaster rather than take on the arduous work of reckoning. Do you have a sense of what produces that collective avoidance? Did your thinking about it change while writing the collection?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s hard to reckon with one disaster as another one is befalling you.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

AH:<\/strong> My perception definitely changed as I started to write the collection. There is this sort of\u2014I don\u2019t know if addiction is the right word, but keeping in the themes of the book\u2014this addiction to chaos, where things are happening very quickly, and one piece of chaos or disaster can befall [you], and you don\u2019t have time to process before the next thing is happening, whether that\u2019s hurricanes, overdoses, prom, funerals\u2014all of it overlapped. And going back to that intertwined-ness of chaos, I would say that as I was writing it, my perception did change, but it was also confirmed in a way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I keep daily planners and weekly calendars, and I have since middle school. And it was illuminating and also affirming to look back at those old calendars from high school and from the couple of years that followed to see how frequently these life-changing events were happening, and in such quick succession. So in part, I think that chaos does prevent some of the processing and the reconciliation that needs to happen. And I don\u2019t know about the collective, but for me, it certainly was a space that was hard to heal when you\u2019re inside of it. It\u2019s hard to reckon with one disaster as another one is befalling you. It\u2019s like keeping your head above water during a high tide. You\u2019re treading water and doing everything you can to just make it to the next day or the next week or the next year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SR: And in turn, the chaos becomes the familiar.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

AH:<\/strong> Definitely, definitely. The chaos becomes the stasis of being. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

SR: It can be difficult to write about addiction without romanticizing it. How did you navigate that balance, both for the readers\u2019 sake and your own? Were there poems in this collection that crossed a line you had to pull back from?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

AH: <\/strong>Early in my writing career, I did fall victim to that, but I\u2019m very lucky to have wonderful mentors. When I first started writing these poems during my MFA, I remember one particular workshop with Eduardo C. Corral where we were going over a poem in which I had likened an image of track marks to wisteria vines. And one of the most valuable pieces of feedback I got about that poem from Eduardo was that I was using beauty for something I shouldn\u2019t. I was afraid to dwell in the ugliness for a long time, and my defense mechanism was to use these beautiful images to lift the reader out of that, or to essentially romanticize it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t think any poems that made it into the book do that. I hope not. What I did end up doing was incorporating beauty and levity and love into the book, but where those things fit\u2014[like in] the relationship between the speaker and her girlfriend before the addiction, or the relationship between the speaker and her friend group. There were moments of real joy and beauty in there, but they didn\u2019t belong in the poems that dwelled in addiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SR: The speaker implicates herself throughout the collection, perhaps most directly in \u201cThe Architect\u201d as she says: \u201cEven if it wasn\u2019t my intention, \/ I helped build this house.\u201d How do you write culpability without letting it tip into self-blame?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

AH:<\/strong> Writing those poems helped me blame myself a little less. Early on in these experiences, I did feel incredibly guilty and responsible. I was constantly grappling with the question, \u201cWhat else could I have done?\u201d And writing the poems where I do express some culpability helped me pull back enough to say, \u201cWe were in the trenches together, and we weren\u2019t each other\u2019s keeper. We did the best with the tools we had at the time.\u201d And in a way, expressing that culpability helped me forgive myself a little bit and forgive her, forgive Florida, forgive our friend group. We weren\u2019t always the best to each other, and that\u2019s something that made our friendships very complicated but also very beautiful. We were certainly flawed, and yet we had this sort of unshakable bond. We were fiercely protective of each other, and sometimes that fierceness turned into fierce betrayals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We were fiercely protective of each other, and sometimes that fierceness turned into fierce betrayals.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t want to say I\u2019m completely guilt-free now. I do still grapple with those feelings, but it was also important for me to include some of my own experiences with opioids or experimenting with drugs and alcohol because we were all in it together. I wasn\u2019t a victim. I wasn\u2019t a bystander or an innocent witness. I was right there alongside the rest of them. And I think, for better or for worse, admitting some of those things to myself and in the book also demonstrates that I\u2019m not demonizing the speaker\u2019s girlfriend. I\u2019m not vilifying addiction or addicts or anyone in recovery. There is only a thin line between what happened and what could have happened. It could have been any of us. And I say that in the collection too. It feels like I got lucky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SR: Do you find that writing gives you some intellectual distance that helped you get to that place of forgiveness?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

AH:<\/strong> It\u2019s a phase of my writing, a lens that I use during revision or drafting. And sometimes thinking of myself as \u201cthe speaker\u201d is like the Scooby-Doo villain\u2019s mask that you take off, and it\u2019s the same person underneath. But even that tiny layer of distance provides enough outside perspective that I can look at things a little bit differently, even if it\u2019s just one hue or shade different. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

SR: Distance from Florida appears in the collection as necessary, and yet it does not ultimately offer a total solution. Instead, recovery is portrayed as an unglamorous, unending process. How do you write honestly about recovery without diminishing its urgency?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

AH:<\/strong> Like anything worthwhile in life, recovery can be difficult, but that doesn\u2019t mean we shouldn\u2019t try. And seeing friends and loved ones go through recovery and advocate for themselves motivated me to portray how difficult it is. How unending it is. It really is a cycle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a metaphor in psychology that likens grief to a ball in a box. And when grief or trauma first happens, the ball inside the box is really large, and it bumps against the walls frequently and with force. Over time, the ball in the box gets smaller, but each time it hits a wall, it\u2019s still just as powerful, just as visceral, as when it first happens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And I think that\u2019s also an apt description for recovery and addiction. <\/strong>It doesn\u2019t matter how long you\u2019ve been cycling through or which number of the cycle you\u2019re on. It\u2019s just as easy to ping back to day one of a recovery or a relapse. But knowing you don\u2019t have to do it alone\u2014that there are people who believe in you\u2014makes it worth it. Their care and love, and the care and love you feel for yourself, is worth it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

SR: Would you be willing to share what your relationship with Florida looks like now?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

AH:<\/strong> Still complicated. I miss Florida every day. I have mermaids in almost every room of my house. I\u2019ve got some shark teeth on my desk. This summer, I\u2019ll have lived in North Carolina for just as long as I lived in Florida\u2014so 13 years\u2014but I don\u2019t know if I\u2019ll ever think of Florida as anything but home. My folks still live in Sarasota. I\u2019ve got lots of friends there. It\u2019s a place that I love to visit. I\u2019m not sure I\u2019ll ever live there again, although those are some famous last words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes thinking of myself as ‘the speaker’ is like the Scooby-Doo villain\u2019s mask that you take off, and it\u2019s the same person underneath.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Though, I do want to add, Florida was recently rated the least safe state in the US for LGBTQ folks. I know tons of queer people who still live in Florida, and it\u2019s so hard to hold that in my mind. There is this awful legislation and political climate in Florida, but also so many people fighting the good fight. A lot of times, I wish I was one of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SR:<\/strong> Your final poem is titled \u201cathazagoraphobia,\u201d meaning the fear of being forgotten. In it, you write: \u201cI start to wonder \/ if I\u2019ve ever really seen a wolf.\u201d When you write for a living, it\u2019s easy to become aware of how memory is constructed, even manufactured. Do you find yourself struggling to trust your own memories? If so, how do you deal with it? How <\/strong>do<\/em><\/strong> you know that wolf was really there?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

AH:<\/strong> I don\u2019t trust my memory because it\u2019s not very strong, but that\u2019s why I have all my calendars and weekly planners. I keep my dentist appointments and doctors appointments and my meetings and my work obligations in those pages, but I also keep written logs of hanging out with friends and going to the beach and\u2014if we\u2019re thinking back to the years depicted in the book\u2014when prom was, when my coach\u2019s funeral was, when our intervention for my girlfriend happened.<\/p>\n\n\n