The feeling of green. Shapeshifters. Pina Bausch. These are among the sources of inspiration the poets in our eighteenth annual feature shared regarding their yearslong journeys toward the publication of their debut collections. Each of the following ten books offers a new lexicon for us to explore the human experience, where language is stretched, and a poem can become “a ghost, caught between reality and longing,” as James Fujinami Moore puts it. Expanding the concept of what constitutes a poem, Maya Salameh’s How to Make an Algorithm in the Microwave transforms poetry into coding, data, a mathematical function, part of software; Courtney Faye Taylor’s Concentrate utilizes collage, photographs, and found text to hold polyphonic states of feeling and thinking; and No‘u Revilla gifts us vertical language with words falling down the page like droplets of rain and growing up like saplings in Ask the Brindled. In Earth Room, Rachel Mannheimer writes an ekphrastic book-length poem with tonal aplomb; in Prescribee, Chia-Lun Chang tackles the immigrant experience with ferocity and vulnerability; and Nicholas Goodly’s Black Swim pours forth lyric poems both magical and muscular.

The breadth of content covered in these collections mirrors the equally wide range of tones and forms. Shelley Wong celebrates queer women of color in As She Appears; John Belk parses masculinity through the lens of pro wrestling in The Gardens of Our Childhoods; Katie Marya meditates on motherhood, marriage, the female body, and desire in Sugar Work; and James Fujinami Moore reckons with brutality, death, and tenderness in indecent hours. These authors decenter overly accustomed narratives by (re)centering their own perspectives on living, their personal and cultural histories, their chosen and biological families. “To write of being and not merely being against,” as Wong says, is the overarching project at play.

For some of these poets the path to publication was a matter of four months, while others landed with their press after six years and thirty-three tries. Though the timing may be different for each writer, several of them mention literary community as the backbone of their collections and writing practices, and dance, allowing the improvisational language of the body, as the impetus for poetry and the cure for burnout. Nature and its untamable ways also prove fertile ground for these poets. Belk draws inspiration from how “[g]ardens are nature we try to curate and script, but it never really goes according to plan—wildness always finds a way in.” In this vein, Taylor recommends fellow writers “act wild on the page. Don’t erase the risks your creativity wants to take.” In honoring the beauty of being and engaging in life’s complexities and multifaceted truths, its aches and pleasures, we present ten shimmering poets whose influences, pathways, and advice are as nourishing and distinct as their debut works. Chang’s recommendation for writers looking to unleash their creativity: “Write something honest and rebellious. Be vulnerable and miserable. Allow the language to thrive outside your body.”

Courtney Faye Taylor | Maya Salameh
John Belk | James Fujinami Moore
No‘u Revilla | Katie Marya
Chia-Lun Chang | Nicholas Goodly
Rachel Mannheimer | Shelley Wong

Courtney Faye Taylor 

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Concentrate
Graywolf Press
(Cave Canem Poetry Prize)

I crept to mom ’n’ pops where bells above doors snitched to mention my entrance.
But I tolled them bells. I was toys to be bothered. I had made such toyish mistakes.
In any Black sentence, you’d love nothing more than to had made        no mistake.

—from “So far”

How it began: Most of the poems in Concentrate were initially part of a different manuscript about my upbringing. I don’t think I was ready to write that book, but I was happy with the poems I had in there about Black girlhood. I took those poems and started building a new manuscript around them. At the same time I was thinking about the murder of Latasha Harlins, who was killed by a Korean shopkeeper during a dispute over a bottle of orange juice in 1991. I can’t remember when I first heard about the killing, but however Latasha came into my consciousness, it was in a secondhand way. Latasha would’ve been forty-seven years old this year. There’s something so heartbreaking about that math. The tragedy that she died at fifteen but also the tragedy that she was refused forty-seven, refused the long, sweet trek to Black womanhood. I had all these wonderings about Latasha, wonderings about the risks and wounds of Black girlhood, wonderings about myself.

Latasha then led me to considerations of Black and Asian American relations. My first understanding of tension between our communities was in the context of Black beauty supply stores. It was easy to understand white racism, but coming to terms with white supremacy between communities of color was difficult. I was curious about this dynamic and what’s behind it, what’s fueling it, what’s misconstrued about it.

Inspiration: I handle complex subject matter in Concentrate—including the manifestation of white supremacy between communities of color and the precarity of Black girlhood under sexually and racially charged violence. While writing the book I sometimes felt like what I needed to say about those concepts couldn’t be held by a traditional poem. The emotion was too big or too oddly shaped. My remedy was an interdisciplinary approach, calling on essay, playwriting, photography, and collage as coconspirators to the poetry. Embracing different forms meant Concentrate became polyvocal, speaking various artistic tongues to convey those unwieldy truths. So I’d say form experimentation was a big inspiration for the writing.

Influences: In 2016 Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon visited my MFA program to give a talk. She opened with this quote from Toni Cade Bambara: “What are you pretending not to know today, Sweetheart? Colored gal on planet earth?  Hmph know everything there is to know, anything she/we don’t know is by definition the unknown.” I’m thankful to Van Clief-Stefanon for bringing that passage into my life. I keep it close. It reminds me that my knowledge as a colored gal is infinite, that I’m already equipped with truth.

When it comes to the influences for Concentrate, there’s Anna Deavere Smith, playwright of Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992. It’s a one-woman show based on interviews Smith did with folks who experienced the L.A. uprising. There’s also Cathy Park Hong’s Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning, which helped me consider the ways Black and Korean American women navigate a similar terrain of vulnerability in this country. Then Dr. Brenda Stevenson, author of The Contested Murder of Latasha Harlins: Justice, Gender, and the Origins of the L.A. Riots. I can’t think of another book that dedicates as much attention and care to the details of Latasha’s life prior to the morning of March 16, 1991.

Concentrate enters a lineage of poetry collections like Bodega by Su Hwang and Imperial Liquor by Amaud Jamaul Johnson. These poets write with such vulnerability, reflecting on the cultural impact of Los Angeles in the 1980s and 1990s.

Writer’s block remedy: I love reality TV—The Real Housewives, Married at First Sight, etc. Sometimes I do this exercise where I’ll listen to a scene from one of those shows and start writing down what I hear—not every word, but the words and phrases that seem interesting. What I end up with is this jumbled, often senseless transcription of dialogue. That found language has given me some unique images and lines that conjure poems.

Advice: You want your work in caring hands. I’m grateful for the thoughtfulness Graywolf has shown my book and the support they’ve offered my career. Early on I tried to figure out which presses might be best for my work so I could focus on submitting to those places.

Submit your manuscript even if it’s not “done.” If it gets picked up, you’ll have time to edit.

Play. Experiment. Act wild on the page. Don’t erase the risks your creativity wants to take.

Finding time to write: I write in pockets of the day where I have free time in my schedule. I’ll go to a coffee shop for a few hours, sit at a table by the window with a vanilla latte or an iced chai (a new favorite). Most of my writing days focus on revision. I’ll go through old poems and see if I have something beneficial to offer them. Eventually, I’d like to start a practice where I sit down to write something brand new on a consistent basis. I tend to only write new things whenever the feeling strikes. It’s an unpredictable spark. But when it happens, I drop whatever I’m doing to capture it. I never silence that impulse.

Putting the book together: When Concentrate won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, it’s organization was really scattered and haphazard—intentionally so, because I wanted the book to read as a clash of inseparable ideas. In a way, I’m asking the reader to “concentrate” in the midst of this wild collage, to trust where I’m leading them, to release the expectation of cohesion because none of this—the beasts of white supremist violence—is sensible or easily digested.

But at the same time, I still needed the book to be readable. My editors, Chantz Erolin and Kiki Nicole, helped me maintain the collage while instilling some order. I added more section titles since there aren’t poem titles. I added the section “Four memorials,” which was an opportunity to step back from the collage feel and speak straight-forwardly. I think of this as the moment where I’m looking in the eye of the camera. So, the editorial process was about the balance of wildness and order.

What’s next: A couple months ago, I found a copy of Grambling State University’s 1991–1992 yearbook at Savers Thrift Store. The yearbook opens with a mention of Rodney King and the L.A. Riots. Having just finished Concentrate, it felt particularly meaningful to come across this artifact. I used images and text from that book to create a visual poem. I’d love to do a series of visual poems based on historically Black colleges and universities’ yearbooks, so I’m on the lookout for those.

My mom is digitizing all the home videos from my childhood, so I’m getting to see this footage for the first time. She just shared a video of me at six-years-old, dressed as Glinda the Good Witch. I can already anticipate the kind of writing these videos may bring out of me.

Though Concentrate has personal elements, it’s largely me analyzing events that happened two thousand miles away and two years before my life began. Maybe my next book will be more of a direct look at myself. Maybe I’ll return to that manuscript I wasn’t ready to write.

Age: 29.

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Residence: Kansas City, Missouri.

Job: I’m a senior writer at Hallmark Cards and I also teach creative writing.

Time spent writing the book: I’ve been considering the topics I address in my book since I was a child. Because thought, feeling, and experience are where a poem begins, the beginnings of this book go back that far. I think the oldest poems in the book are from six years ago. Those are poems I wrote during my MFA years.

Time spent finding a home for it: I submitted Concentrate for the first time in 2019, but prior to that I had a different manuscript that I started sending out in 2017.

Recommendations for recent debut poetry collections: All the Blood Involved in Love (Haymarket Books) by Maya Marshall. Her lyric meditations on motherhood—both the choice to mother and the choice not to—feel timely, especially as women continue to be unprotected in decisions of motherhood. The book considers the meaning of desire and freedom, and who has access to them. A favorite line, from the poem “An Abortion Ban”: “A fetus without lungs is an unlucky horseshoe. / A fetus in a homeless woman is an empty pillowcase.”

Muscle Memory (PANK Books) by Kyle Carrero Lopez. Kyle’s poetry is so alive and sonic. The chapbook handles the full menacing scope of anti-blackness without flinching, with the kind of language that stares you dead in the face. A favorite line, from the poem “Petty”: “If it’s petty / to take what should already be free, / is pettiness a small revolution?”

I’m excited to read Bluest Nude (Milkweed Editions) by Ama Codjoe. Every poem I’ve seen posted online from this collection has blown me away.

Concentrate by Courtney Faye Taylor  

Maya Salameh 

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How to Make an Algorithm in the Microwave
University of Arkansas Press
(Etel Adnan Poetry Prize)

don’t make
an amenable
saint.

—from “How to Lazarus Yourself”

How it began: I was drawn to writing this book out of a deep curiosity about our technologies, especially the ways we are creating such intimate relationships with supposedly inanimate objects. The phones we lie next to every night collect our medical information, the pills we take, the politicians we believe, the sad poems in our Notes app, our porn, and food preferences. All our lives, interests, and dreams are becoming part of an unwitting archive—but a computer is not a stone pallet simply holding that information; it’s monetizing it. So how do we begin to stare back at these appliances of the surveillance state? How do we begin to say, the computer is not infallible either, the algorithm is riddled with bugs we can pick at and opinions that can be rewritten. Once I started thinking about what it might feel like to play with technological forms in more rambunctious ways, to impose play on the algorithm, it felt like an important space of freedom to explore. And from there came the book.

Inspiration: Some sources of inspiration have included: creeks, chamomile cigarettes, the feeling of green, blinds that don’t come down right, bugs in software updates, bugs in the corners of wooden sheds, spiders in August, August, my sister, blue-light-tinted sleep, my grandmothers, brown suitcases, Amy Winehouse, small pieces of the Bible I’ve read, structure, the defiling of form, white peaches, red grapes, and ceramic soup spoons.

Influences: Some of the poets who have deeply informed my work are Safia Elhillo, whose bilingual experimentation and languaging made me less afraid to explore my tongues; Vanessa Angélica Villarreal, whose collection, Beast Meridian (Noemi Press, 2017), inspired me to play more with what we deem scientific knowledge; Franny Choi, whose delightfully gory, cyborg-woman writing helped me find the beauty and divinity in the uncomfortable; and Khadijah Queen, whose collection I’m So Fine: A List of Famous Men & What I Had On (YesYes Books, 2017) remains one of the closest dictionaries for my experience of womanhood I’ve ever encountered.

Writer’s block remedy: I turn to my friends, my television, and my life. I turn away from the poems, so they feel less stage-shy, and turn to writing everywhere else: prose, journaling, even song. In moments of burnout I love being able to access my other mediums, especially dance. I find my body often knows the language my mouth is still forming.

Advice: Don’t force the book to be perfect before you let it see the world. Send it places; that travel will shape it in turn.

Finding time to write: In the corners of time my work allows me, and capitalism forgets—on the bus, in line at the grocery store, and before I go to sleep.

Putting the book together: This was such a difficult process for me because I wanted each poem to fit well in its neighborhood of fellows. I ended up printing out the whole manuscript and moving poems around on the floor for three hours until I’d put together a configuration that felt like it sang well together.

What’s next: I’m resting, allowing myself to digest the completion of this first baby, and letting my poems return to me slowly and with leisure.

Age: 22.

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Residence: Champaign, Illinois.

Job: I’m a graduate student!

Time spent writing the book: About a year.

Time spent finding a home for it: Four months.

Recommendations for recent debut poetry collections: How to Identify Yourself With a Wound (Kallisto Gaia Press) by KB and Return Flight (Milkweed Editions) by Jennifer Huang.

How to Make an Algorithm in the Microwave by Maya Salameh  

John Belk 

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The Gardens of Our Childhoods
Autumn House Press
(Rising Writer Prize in Poetry)

(no wrestler has ever used an Annie Lennox song as entry music
                                             for fear the whole world might weep, split
    apart at its belt, whistle its conscience to make itself cry)

—from “bar trivia: no wrestler has ever used an Annie Lennox song as entry music”

How it began: I was a huge fan of professional wrestling growing up, but I gradually stopped following as my life got busier. I didn’t watch much in college or graduate school, but when I moved to Utah there was a crew of wrestling fans who got me back into it. Meanwhile, I was writing these poems about self-harm and masculinity, and one night it just hit me: Pro wrestling offers such an interesting mechanism for exploring those issues. I mean, you’ve got these literal larger-than-life men acting out over-the-top violence to tell stories that smudge the line between fiction and reality—what better way to interrogate masculinity than to write poems about their mothers?

Inspiration: Obviously wrestling but also nature. I spend a lot of my free time hiking, camping, and gardening, which in the high desert at around 6,000 feet means very little water and a very difficult growing climate with big temperature fluctuations and lots of unpredictability. I guess that’s just how I like things. But as I was working on The Gardens of Our Childhoods and tending to my own garden, I was struck by the tangled, overlapping relationship between gardens and nature—how it mirrors that of fiction and reality in wrestling. Gardens are nature we try to curate and script, but it never really goes according to plan—wildness always finds a way in. Even the most orderly and formal French garden has that wildness at its heart.

Influences: David Kirby’s work has been a massive influence ever since my school days, so it was a huge honor for him to blurb Gardens. Anne Carson’s work also influenced this book in particular, and I’ve been lucky to have studied with wonderful poets whose words and cadences will forever be a part of me: Robin Becker, Julia Kasdorf, James Brasfield, and Todd Davis, among others.

Writer’s block remedy: I go up the mountain or into the woods. Also teaching—I find it impossibly difficult to write unless I’m teaching.

Advice: Find or start a writers group! There is nothing better for accountability, feedback, and progress than a writers group. I was extraordinarily lucky to be in a group with two exceptional writers while I was working on Gardens: Sarah Bates and Laura Walker. Sarah was working on a wonderful chapbook, Tender, that has since been published by New Michigan Press, and Laura is on sabbatical traveling to various residencies to finish her novel right now. So yeah, get thee a writers group!

Finding time to write: Isn’t that always the dream—finding time? I used to write in binges—six to ten hours in a single go. I don’t have large blocks of time like that anymore, unless I’m up into the wee hours, and that’s just not sustainable.

When I moved to Utah, I had to retrain myself to write in the time I had, when I had it: usually thirty-minute to hour chunks. I still go on the occasional all-night writing binge, but I just don’t have the stamina to do it regularly anymore.

Putting the book together: I knew I wanted to braid multiple poetic sequences together into a loose thematic narrative that moved wildly outward into space, and I knew I wanted the Perry Saturn sequence to be the engine of that movement. Then Mike Good with Autumn House suggested a few rearrangements, placing key poems earlier in the manuscript to help the reader get their bearings and learn how to read the book. This was brilliant since the book is filled with interconnections and Easter eggs across poems, and I think the reordering really helped highlight that.

What’s next: I’ve been working on a collection of poems about pirate queens (there are even a few minor pirate queen appearances in Gardens). The central sequence follows a fictional narrator, while the rest focus on various actual pirate queens throughout history. The first two poems are up right now at Menagerie Magazine [7]!

Age: 37.

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Residence: Cedar City, Utah, at the foot of a mountain under the shade of a giant blue spruce.

Job: I’m a Rhetoric and Writing professor at Southern Utah University, where I direct the composition program. I’m basically a writing teacher, scholar, and data geek administrator when I’m not writing poems.

Time spent writing the book: I wrote the first poem in early 2017 and submitted the first batch of poems to journals in early 2018. The full manuscript was finished and submitted in early 2021, so almost exactly four full years.

Time spent finding a home for it: That’s a funny story because I had been shopping an entirely different manuscript around for a couple of years with good success—a few semi-finalist and finalist awards in contests. In fact, that manuscript had been a finalist with Autumn House twice, but for whatever reason, two years ago I decided to submit this new, weird collection of wrestling poems I had been working on instead. I seriously had the other manuscript attached in the submission manager and then at the last minute went back and attached Gardens before hitting Submit. I think I sent it to two or three other contests after that, but Autumn House was technically the first place I ever submitted Gardens, and I almost didn’t.

Recommendations for recent debut poetry collections: The Body He Left Behind (Cider Press Review) by Reese Conner—I’m a cat person and it’s a cat book, but also so much more. Just devastatingly beautiful.

Out of Order (Autumn House Press) by Alexis Sears—an absolute triumph of form, lyric, everything. Gorgeous.

Drift Migration (Ashland Poetry Press) by Danielle Beazer Dubrasky—I’m perhaps biased to Louisiana poetry, where I grew up, and Utah poetry, where I live now. The natural world of Utah is all through this one, but like the other titles I’ve listed, it’s obviously so, so much more.

The Gardens of Our Childhoods by John Belk  

James Fujinami Moore

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indecent hours
Four Way Books

In this moment we are both relentlessly alive.

                       (Brother, in the garden they said there was a tree for you.)

—from “tendering”

How it began: This is a hard question to answer. I’ve periodically put together collections of work throughout the past seven or eight years as an exercise in organization. But after a while the collection started to feel like something that existed outside of just me, like clay scraps that began to feel a little alive. That moment of realization was probably where the work stopped feeling like an exercise and started feeling like a book.

Inspiration: I’ve been extraordinarily lucky to be a part of some incredible communities. My MFA colleagues remain some of my best readers and closest friends. Writers conferences and workshop groups have given me some brilliant mentors and readers. Poetry collections can seem like the product of one lone writer, but my book bears the fingerprints of so many exceptional and generous people.

In terms of the work itself: For me poems come from irreconcilable differences in facts and/or desires. What happens when a boxer kills his opponent in the ring? What does it mean when a war criminal is humiliated by his captors? How do I tell a history I am exhausted of telling? A poem is like a ghost, caught between reality and longing. So a lot of the inspiration comes from history, too.

Influences: Like many poets of my generation, Richard Siken’s Crush grabbed me by the throat. I read it at the right time and it showed me what a poem could really do. John Murillo and Li Young-Lee both have this incredible, rangy movement in their work that sets up astonishment so perfectly. Solmaz Sharif’s work really broke open my understanding of the way that form can convey power while leaving room for grace.

Writer’s block remedy: When nothing comes, I take a step back. I follow obsessions, wikiholes, weird facts that I can’t quite square or understand. What happened during the Taiping Rebellion? What’s the oldest surface on earth? And then I try to go back to the page with both a sense of play and some odd constraint. If I think my writing has to be good or meaningful or important, I freeze up. I also try to remember writing poems can just be fun.

Advice: Get readers, ideally people whose work you admire, whose opinions you trust, and who love your work. Putting together a book teaches you a lot about yourself, but sometimes it reveals patterns in your writing that can be obvious to other folks but invisible to you. (Someone told me that I like birds. I’ve never met a single bird.)

Finding time to write: Often the small moments of a day are where the writing happens. I write a lot on my phone, on an app that syncs to my computer. I transfer that work to a Word document and sketch out more when a quiet moment emerges. For some (not all) of the work, that transfer period is useful. If I’m not in the same headspace as I was when writing the original fragment and it’s still interesting to me, that’s usually a good sign that the work has life in it.

Putting the book together: I went through a few different orders: chronological, by subject, even alphabetical at one point. Eventually a friend of mine suggested that the book might be a braid. That resonated. I took every poem in the book and classified it according to subject, length, and intensity, and interwove them together, so history was followed by intimacy, rawness by form. I wanted my reader to feel guided and cared for. After an intense moment or series of moments, there is always a breath.

What’s next: Currently I’m trying to float and follow my impulses. I’m really enjoying playing with some experimental forms: poems of annotation, poems that play with time. This debut is made of work over a long period of time; now that it’s outside of me and in the world, I’m finding joy in discovering new ways to approach lines, line breaks, and sound.

Age: 33.

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Residence: Los Angeles.

Job: I work in marketing, which is a curious counterpart to writing poetry; attempting to convey as clear a message in as few words as possible, and to evoke only desire.

Time spent writing the book: The oldest poem is about nine years old, which is a funny sensation: In about a decade I’ve written a little over seven thousand words that I think are worth a damn.

Time spent finding a home for it: I was incredibly lucky to have my manuscript solicited by Four Way Books.

Recommendations for recent debut poetry collections: Paul Tran’s All the Flowers Kneeling (Penguin Books). Grace MacNair’s chapbook, Even as They Curse Us (Bull City Press). Wo Chan’s Togetherness (Nightboat Books). Kien Lam’s Extinction Theory (University of Georgia Press). Jhani Randhawa’s Time Regime (Gaudy Boy). Anni Liu’s Border Vista (Persea Books).

indecent hours by James Fujinami Moore  

No‘u Revilla 

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Ask the Brindled
Milkweed Editions
(National Poetry Series)

…we listen to grandmother talk about shedding.
And for the dark pit of her mouth, we have reverence.

—from “About the effects of shedding skin”

How it began: Hawaiians have been writers and lovers of poetry for centuries, and I wanted to show up for my ancestors. I also wanted to show up for other queer ‘Ōiwi women who know how to jimmy-rig care and connection out of wreckage. Our abundance is worth a lifetime of poems.

Inspiration: There are two central figures in Ask the Brindled: my grandmother and the shapeshifters I come from, who are called mo‘o. In Hawaiian culture, mo‘o are water protectors who take the form of lizards and women. I’m lucky to have access to the different kinds of stories that surround these figures, in oral traditions and written texts, in ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i and English, in family knowledge and historical archives.

Influences: Haunani-Kay Trask is a beloved ʻŌiwi poet and activist. She taught me how to swallow colonizers while I build what she called a “slyly / reproductive” life.

Writer’s block remedy: I go to the water, whether river, ocean, or muliwai. E ola i ka wai.

Advice: Practice gratitude and uplift others. Earning your community nourishes your writing.

Finding time to write: I’m learning how to say no to things in order to protect what I say yes to, like my writing. Indigenous women are often expected to say yes to everything, as if we aren’t taking care of our people unless we’re on the brink of burnout. I’m learning how to say no like it’s a complete sentence—because it is. I believe in generative refusal.

Putting the book together: Ask the Brindled begins with two seeds and ends in a grove. My dear friend Rajiv Mohabir, an intelligent and generous writer, taught me a lot about shaping a manuscript. This book would not be here without his guidance.

What’s next: Collaboration is an important part of my practice. Right now, I’m lucky to be dreaming and creating alongside two other Indigenous Pasifika women who are visual artists.

Age: 36.

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Residence: I was born and raised in Wai‘ehu on the island of Maui, and I currently live in Pālolo Valley on O‘ahu.

Job: I am an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Hawai‘i in Mānoa.

Time spent writing the book: Most of the book was written between 2018 and 2019. The next two years were spent revising and being honest about what I wanted to do with the work.

Time spent finding a home for it: I submitted the manuscript in March 2021 and heard the good news from the National Poetry Series in August 2021.

Recommendations for recent debut poetry collections: Read Julian Aguon’s lyric essay, No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies (Astra House)!

Ask the Brindled by No‘u Revilla  

Katie Marya

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Sugar Work
Alice James Books
(Alice James Award Editor’s Choice)

There is no country for me except the body.

And my mother’s body.

—from “Exaltation”

How it began: Oh, who knows! My lived experience. A burning desire. I know I got serious about the oldest poems in this book while I was teaching high school Spanish from 2012 to 2015. I had been writing in my closet when I could find the time. To nudge myself toward some kind of self-care during my second year of teaching, I took a poetry class in the evenings at Austin Community College. I compelled myself to write this book—and my fellow, beloved writers from that class compelled me.

Influences: In terms of poetic form, Natasha Trethewey. Reading her work taught me everything I knew about fixed forms at the time. Louise Glück and Lorna Dee Cervantes are the poets I read over and over while writing Sugar Work.

Writer’s block remedy: Food prepared with care. Going outside. Riding my bike. Wanting to leave a legacy of thoughtfulness and artistic knowing for my niece and nephews. I listen to a lot of music. I trust that what I do every day contributes to the work of writing. I don’t worry much about the impasse—it is a signal to give things time.

Advice: Get out of your own way. Spend time with people you love. Work hard. I maxed out a small credit card on submission fees. If you can, don’t pull any punches about what it costs to get a book of poetry out there.

Finding time to write: I have been in a PhD program the last six years, which has allowed me to exist alongside brilliant writers. Even in my busiest semesters, being a part of an artistic community has felt like “time to write.”

What’s next: I am working on a second manuscript about grief. It hinges on a study of the history of drumming, the drum kit, and fentanyl. My dad is a drummer. It’s part elegy, part homage to the artistic collaborations we could have had but didn’t. It’s a love song for my brothers.

Age: The tail end of 34.

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Residence: Lincoln, Nebraska.

Job: I am a graduate student right now. My hope is to land a tenure-track professorship in an English department sometime soon, though I know the market is rough. I have taught some form of language and writing since I was 23. I started as a high school Spanish teacher. Of course, I’ve worked all kinds of odd jobs, too. Right now I work a few hours a week at a bicycle shop to make ends meet. It’s a beautiful place.

Time spent writing the book: I started in 2014, so eight years altogether.

Time spent finding a home for it: Three years.

Recommendations for recent debut poetry collections: Earth Room (Changes Press) by Rachel Mannheimer. I am looking forward to Brother Sleep (Alice James Books) by Aldo Amparán.

Sugar Work by Katie Marya  

Chia-Lun Chang

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Prescribee
Nightboat Books
(Nightboat Poetry Prize)

to balance the system
some have split the skin
a few have hidden
most cut off tails
to survive or sign up for surveillance

—from “Do Not Grow Flowers for Oxygen”

How it began: For a while I couldn’t grasp the urgency of making a book. I took creative writing classes after arriving in the States, to practice English, but I didn’t start writing “poems” until my MFA class in 2012. My teacher, Anselm Berrigan, shared examples of poems that could not have been other forms of writing, and it really stimulated my understanding of poetry. At the time I also wrote fiction and nonfiction, but my peers thought my poems were stronger. From 2014 to 2019, to maintain my immigrant status, I had to act as a working poet.

I enjoy writing poems and how difficult the process can be. But what’s the purpose of publishing a collection of mine? Honestly, I still don’t know. To me, the difference between writing a poem and a book of poems is that I have to let the book go. A poem is an ongoing and eternal journey, dwelling in editing. A book of poems is a farewell; as soon as it is printed and announced one must be ready for the departure and to engage in a conversation with readers. 

Inspiration: In-between life, off-center, women, the underdog’s story, and conversations with family. The anger when authorities abuse their power. The process of making life decisions. I believe that I’m a product of culture and society. Growing up in Taiwan, where we had a strict education system, I was raised to fit in a box, trim my differences, and suppress whimsical perspectives. I didn’t want to be put in a box, but it was not all bad inside. This experience taught me to question and analyze my desires and apply that to my writing. I tend to be attracted to intense, strange, and dissonant languages and scenes.

Influences: Charles Yu, for the sharpness, hopelessness, and humor that stir together in his books. In Interior Chinatown (Pantheon, 2020), one of Yu’s characters, Dorothy asks, “How do we have a love story in a place like this?” Her husband, Ming-Chen Wu, replies, “It’s true. We don’t choose our circumstances. We will have to fall in love when we can. Stolen moments. Between jobs, between scenes. Not a love story. But our story.” For most of my life, I’ve been anxious and suffering from discomfort. This paragraph teaches me to love and to keep writing, even when the situation is unbearable. In Taiwan, I was surrounded by dramatic, negative, and mad comments due to geopolitical tensions. The threat of war surrounded us. But I’ve also met the best humorists. To internalize the chaos, Yu captures and balances these sensations so well and they puncture me. 

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee, a classic book about multilingualism, displacement, tongues, and herstory. Aimé Césaire’s Notebook of a Return to the Native Land. This book taught me how to navigate my rage and not overburn the pages. Graham Greene’s The Quiet American is my guidebook to modern American anthropology. 

Writer’s block remedy: Manga, performances, fine arts, and conversations with peers.

I have always been obsessed with manga. My family asserted that I’d grow out of it. Unfortunately, they’re wrong. Manga is the most complicated art form to me. It combines many elements. I also love how manga instantly bounces between high and low art—the topics range from philosophy to the mundane. You can appreciate the drawing or the story, but the best is when you can enjoy both! 

Living in cities, it’s such a privilege to go to art events; I enjoy literary talks, live performances, museums, galleries, and exchanging ideas with others. When I get burnt out, I observe outside activities and make notes. It’s important to take a break and do nothing.

Advice: Give yourself time. Take classes from your favorite writers and thinkers. Take on interesting projects when life permits. Try everything and challenge yourself: Explore ideas, forms, styles, voices, and parodies. Narrow and select the ones speaking in your shape, the ones you choose to spend more time with (and within their histories), and the ones that move, excite, terrify, and shock you. Write something honest and rebellious. Be vulnerable and miserable. Allow the language to thrive outside of your body.

Putting the book together: This was the most difficult part. I proposed a rough outline with particular poems placed in a certain order, then my editor at Nightboat, Gia Gonzales, listened to the story of each poem and arranged them together with care. With many poems having distinct personalities, Gia was extremely helpful in binding them together. 

What’s next: A script with director and cinematographer Haoyan of America about foreign students adventuring in the “Work and Travel USA” program. My second book, an extension from my Belladonna chaplet, An Alien Well-Tamed. Translating English poems to Taiwanese Mandarin, since it is my first language. I’m looking for platforms to introduce my favorite poems to Taiwanese readers.

Age: 36.

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Residence: Brooklyn, New York; Taipei and Puli, Taiwan.

Job: I earn a living as a content strategist and conversation designer in the tech sector. I also teach poetry, fiction, and translation occasionally.

Time spent writing the book: The first poem was written in 2011. That being said, eleven years.

Time spent finding a home for it: After receiving my green card in 2019, I lost my passion, became depressed, and didn’t know what to do next. After that I submitted my manuscript as a chapbook to Gold Line Press, where I was a finalist for its Poetry Chapbook Competition. Muriel Leung, the former editor in chief, gave me helpful feedback and motivation by suggesting that I turn my manuscript into a full-length book. I wanted to try something new to escape my depression, so I took her advice. I built my manuscript up to fifty-five pages and submitted it to three publishers. Three months later, Nightboat picked it up; then I rewrote, edited, and added twenty more pages.

Recommendations for recent debut poetry collections: I’m excited to read debuts from other Nightboat authors, including imogen xtian smith (stemmy things) and Wo Chan (Togetherness). Also, forthcoming titles: Sarah Audsley’s Landlock X (Texas Review Press) and Omotara James’s Song of My Softening (Alice James Books).  

Prescribee by Chia-Lun Chang  

Nicholas Goodly

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Black Swim
Copper Canyon Press

you ask the moon
for your reflection
she gives you
her last breath

—from “Scrying”

How it began: I was compelled to write this book because I knew it had potential to speak to people in the same way that writing the poems spoke to me. I wanted to create a book that explored a multitude of voices, allowing Black and queer people, as well as others, to identify with these poems and find solace in that recognition. I saw an opportunity to touch the lives of people I care about by sharing the richness of my innermost feelings.

Inspiration: Before I was a writer I was a contemporary dancer and did a lot of work to understand how to express the body, or how the body expresses itself. I have always paid close attention to the ways the body uses sensation to communicate with us. I think this influences my poetic work as I stay connected to sensory information passing to and from the body, and what that communicates to the self and others. I am interested in intuitive sense, the language of intimacy beyond what we know on an intellectual level. I play with combining voices and texturally rich images to evoke feelings we know but can’t articulate, feelings that are bigger than the sum of the words used to describe them.

Influences: Danez Smith was one of the first living poets I read and felt a kindred connection to. It took a whole day for me to read Don’t Call Us Dead because it was so emotionally overwhelming, like I was being seen, really, for the first time. I admire so much about their craft and play while writing profound and revolutionary work. CAConrad is someone I return to for lessons on what it can mean to be a poet, how to extend the artistic practice beyond the page, and how to tap into the true energy of things. I learned about the gift of strangeness from Dorothea Lasky, how to tell the truth, and how to wield the powers of being fabulous and brave to devastating effect. Wayne Koestenbaum is another writer I look to for his prolific body of work, his range, and his ability to write about what he loves passionately and intelligently, and put his whole self in it, every time.

Writer’s block remedy: I watch a lot of documentaries on artists I admire from the past. Poets, painters, dancers, critics, anything I can get my hands on. It’s hard not to watch those and get a tinge of jealousy, a drive to churn something out, in any medium, to just do something. Learning about how disciplined and driven my heroes are makes me want to aim for that level of obedience. Hearing about different artists’ concerns and practices also gives me new ideas to play with in my own way. It’s one-part motivation, one-part inspiration, the perfect way to get me back to the page.

Advice: Trust the process. Take all the time you have to refine your work. You get only one first impression on the world, no need to rush it. Urgency, along with time, is an illusion, or a matter of point of view. Keep editing. Until it’s in print, the manuscript is still alive. Make choices that scare even you. The actual writing of the book is the best part; soak in all the pleasure you can from an otherwise grueling process. An artist will really love the work of it.

Finding time to write: The writing comes out when it’s ready; what I have to actively make time for is reading. I used to work at a library and made sure to sneak in at least an hour of reading time a day. The more I read, the more inspired I get to write.

Putting the book together: I looked at a manuscript as creating a new world or space in the mind/mind’s eye, a house with many rooms in it. It’s my job when bringing people into that world to walk people through it. What do I want to show them first? Does it make sense to put the bathroom next to the garden? How can I take the reader from the kitchen to the bedroom? Did I move too fast through the pool house? Did I spend too much time showing off the walk-in closet? I wanted to organize the collection so the path opens up in front of the reader organically. The goal is for each poem to be in a place that allows it to shine within the context of the book, a context I am responsible for creating. Changing the poetic attention from micro to macro in this way was the hardest part, so inviting and trusting outside voices to edit at this stage was helpful. It’s almost a different skillset.

What’s next: I am writing towards a second collection, particularly trying more ekphrastic modes. I’m still writing very Black, very queer poems, and I’m still a squishy bundle of messy emotions. We’re just turning up the dial on all those things.

Age: 31.

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Residence: Atlanta, born and raised.

Job: I am in the creative writing PhD program at Florida State University, a member of the performing arts platform Fly on a Wall, and assistant poetry editor of Southeast Review.

Time spent writing the book: First drafts of some poems trace back as far as nine years ago, maybe more. I like the poems that have been marinating for a long time. The variety in voice over the years adds some welcome flavor to the collection.

Time spent finding a home for it: It took around four years to find a publisher for Black Swim. I am grateful for each rejection, because every no was an opportunity to review and edit the work little by little, until the version that got accepted was leaps and bounds greater than what I originally sent out. A book is never finished, but I am happy I got time to put my best foot forward for my debut.

Black Swim by Nicholas Goodly