Kelsea Ballerini Dishes To Reese Witherspoon If Her Poems Will Become Songs

Kelsea Ballerini just debuted her first book of poetry, and she marked the release by sharing a conversation with Reese Witherspoon.

The country artist and the award-winning actress delved into Feel Your Way Through, including Ballerini’s inspirations and how writing helps her process emotions. Ballerini credits Witherspoon as her “incredible friend,” and her “sister in another life,” gushing that “i loveeee this woman and am so thankful for her wisdom and willingness to share a little glimpse into our heart to heart girl talk.”

Witherspoon congratulated Ballerini on the “beautiful, amazing book of poetry that you have written. I feel like your heart and soul is in these pages.” Acknowledging that “I have big feelings,” Ballerini opened up about turning her thoughts on body image issues, female support systems, growing up and other important, vulnerable topics into poems. She explained that she turned to poetry writing at the beginning of the pandemic, in March of 2020, when she was unable to tour after releasing a new album: “…it was really scary, and I think I just had the choice of like, how am I gonna handle this? And this is the way I really have always processed my life. I had 10,000 words a few months later, and I was like, ‘I think — I think this is a book.’”

During their conversation, Witherspoon couldn’t resist asking: Will any of the poems be written into songs? Ballerini revealed:

“Oh my gosh! You know it’s interesting, I — I really had to not write music while I wrote this book. I couldn’t cross it, for some reason, in my brain. But yes. Now that I’m working on the next record, I’ve found that a couple of them have inspired a couple of the songs. And I’m still so early into it, I don’t really know what it’s gonna be, but… I dug so deep and I found parts of myself that I didn’t really know were there while writing this, and so, I have this whole new, undiscovered tank that I’m gonna just see what else comes out.”

Watch their full conversation here: