Why Vulnerability Makes Better Art & The Thing About Falling - Tank Ball

In a candid, laughter-laced conversation, Tarriona "Tank" Ball pulls back the curtain on vulnerability as both artistic method and emotional necessity. Discussing her poetry collection The Thing About Falling, Ball distinguishes this work from her earlier book Vulnerable by one crucial shift: this time, the poems were not written for anyone else—not an ex, not an audience—but for herself. What emerges is an unguarded meditation on love after heartbreak, the danger of rushing healing, and the quiet education that happens in the “in-between” relationships. Falling, she explains, is never intentional, but survival depends on whether someone—or something—can catch you when it happens. Moving fluidly between humor, romance, self-reckoning, and performance, the conversation affirms writing as one of the most exposed art forms there is: just words, memory, and nerve. In Ball’s telling, poetry does not resolve longing or confusion—it names them, dignifies them, and reminds the listener they are not alone in feeling exactly this way. 

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