Questions to Ask Poets
Good questions to ask a poet in an interview, on a class visit, in the Q&A after a reading, or over a long talk with a friend who writes. The 60 questions here open with the ones every poet expects (when they started, where the ideas come from, who they read) and then go at the working parts: drafting, line breaks and revision, what they write about and for whom, what a reading demands that the page does not, how a book is ordered and how the writing gets paid for.
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The questions
Each question, and why to ask it
Start here
When did you start writing poems, and what were the early ones like?
Why ask it
Asking what the early poems were like turns a date into a story. Poets tend to remember them exactly, rhymes and heartbreak included, and laughing about them together settles an interview quickly. A useful follow-up is when the poems stopped being private.
Where do your ideas for poems come from on an ordinary day?
Why ask it
This is the inspiration question with the mystique taken out. Expect to hear about attention more than lightning: an overheard phrase, a misread sign, a word that would not leave. If the answer is simply 'everywhere', ask where the last one came from.
Which poets made you want to write in the first place?
Why ask it
Early loves are often different from the names in an official bio. A songwriter, a school anthology or a poem pinned up in a classroom is as likely an answer as a famous name, and the admission tends to relax the whole conversation. What they make of that poet now is a second, better question.
Which of your own poems is your favorite, and is it the one readers choose?
Why ask it
The two often differ. A reader's favorite is usually the poem that gets requested at readings, while the poet may name one that took years to get right or that nobody mentions. What they see in the overlooked poem is the interesting part, and it gives you a specific poem to talk about instead of the work in general.
What are you working on right now?
Why ask it
Puts the conversation on the thing they are closest to, not the book that came out two years ago and has been talked through at every event since. A guarded or vague answer may mean the project is at the stage where describing it spoils it, so take the short version and move on.
Why poetry, and not stories or songs?
Why ask it
A good reply is about what a poem can do that the other forms cannot: fit a whole afternoon into twelve lines, stop without explaining, lean on sound. 'Self-expression' is the stock reply, and the real one is usually behind it, in a story or a song they tried first and gave up on.
Did you like poetry when you were at school?
Why ask it
Made for a class visit, because the honest answer is often no, or not the poems that were set. Ask which poem or teacher turned it around. Students who are bored by the syllabus tend to sit up when a published poet admits to having been bored by it too.
What was the first poem you knew by heart?
Why ask it
The first is often a nursery rhyme, a hymn or something drilled at school, and its rhythm may still be audible in their own lines. If they can still say it, a few lines spoken from memory change the mood of a room more than any answer about technique.
What are you reading at the moment, poetry or otherwise?
Why ask it
'Or otherwise' is the half that pays. A poet deep in a field guide, a history of a war or a stack of court transcripts is telling you where the vocabulary of the next poems is coming from, which a list of influences never does.
Which poet did you have to get out of your system?
Why ask it
It names the imitation stage that most writers will own up to, which makes it more candid than a question about influences. Listen for the habit that outlived the phase: very long sentences, very short lines, a taste for the plain statement.
Process
Do poems start with a line, an image, or something you are trying to work out?
Why ask it
A poet who starts from a phrase is following sound, and one who starts from a problem is following an argument, so the answer tells you what to listen for in the poems. Anyone who says all three should be asked which one the most recent poem began with.
Where and when do you actually write?
Why ask it
'Actually' asks for the practical answer over the romantic one. Forty minutes before a shift, a bus ride and three protected hours each make a different kind of poem possible, and poets can often say which of their poems came out of which.
Do you draft by hand, on a screen, or on your phone, and does the tool change the poem?
Why ask it
Few poets are neutral on this. You may hear that handwriting slows a line down, that a phone screen shortens it, or that they can tell which of their own poems began on a keyboard. If there is a notebook in their bag, ask whether you can see a page.
What goes into your notebook that never becomes a poem?
Why ask it
Lists of words, the weather, things strangers said on a train: the answer shows what a poet collects before any poem is in sight. Nobody has to defend a notebook entry, so people answer more freely here than when asked about finished work.
How long does a poem take from the first notes to something you would show anyone?
Why ask it
Go for the fastest and the slowest, not the average. The poem that arrived in an afternoon and the one that sat in a drawer for years are both better stories than a typical figure, and the reason the slow one was slow usually names what this poet finds hard.
Do you ever write to a prompt or a commission, and can you tell afterwards?
Why ask it
Class exercises, commissions and the poem for a friend's wedding come with the job. The example to hope for is an assigned poem that turned out better than the ones they chose to write. A poet who says they can always tell will know what gives it away, which is a small lesson in what forced writing sounds like.
Is there one person you show a poem to before it is ready?
Why ask it
A first reader is often another poet from a class years back, a partner, or an editor who has become a friend. Ask what that person is good at catching. Whatever it is, you have just heard the weakness the poet knows about and cannot spot alone.
What happens to the poems that never come right?
Why ask it
Most of the hours go into drafts nobody sees, so this asks about the larger part of the job. A folder that gets raided for lines years later and a habit of deleting on sight are opposite temperaments. The best version of the answer includes a line rescued from a dead poem and where it lives now.
Do you get writer's block, and what ended the longest spell?
Why ask it
Asked as a matter of record, it gets a calmer answer than asking what they are afraid of. Whatever broke the last silence (a deadline, a new form, a long walk) is advice you can borrow. Leave it out if they have already said they are in a dry spell now.
Whose work do you go back to when the writing stalls?
Why ask it
This is a shorter list than their favorites, and it is chosen for use. The book kept by the desk because ten minutes with it gets the pen moving may be by a poet they sound nothing like, and why it works on them is worth the extra minute.
Craft
What does a poem have to do for you to call it good?
Why ask it
The abstract version, 'what makes a good poem', gets a seminar. Put this way, the poet has to name a test: it surprised them, they wanted to read it twice, a line stayed with them all week. Follow with a poem by someone else that passes, and you will see what their own are aiming at.
Do you read drafts aloud, and what does that catch?
Why ask it
The answer turns technical quickly: a clot of consonants, a line break nobody would breathe at, a sentence that runs out of air. It is the shortest route from vague talk about the music of a poem to what this poet is really listening for.
How do you decide where a line breaks?
Why ask it
It is the one decision a prose writer never has to make, which makes it a quick test of how a poet thinks. Listen for whether they break on the breath, on the sense, or against both for the tension. Bring one of their poems and point at a single break, and the answer gets far more exact.
Do you write in set forms like the sonnet, and what does a form give you that free verse does not?
Why ask it
Poets who use form tend to describe it as pressure, not decoration: fourteen lines force a cut, and the repeated line in a villanelle has to mean something new each time it returns. A poet who avoids form will have a reason just as specific, and it deserves the same attention.
Do your poems rhyme, and how do you decide when one should?
Why ask it
Poets hear 'why doesn't it rhyme' as a complaint, so keep the tone curious. A full answer covers half rhyme and rhyme buried mid-line as well as the chiming kind at the line end, and says what a full rhyme does to the mood of a poem.
What do you cut first when you revise?
Why ask it
Revision is where a poet keeps a private list of tics to hunt: adjectives, the last two lines, the abstract noun in the final stanza, the explanation added for the reader's sake. A poet who cannot name one may not revise much, which is worth knowing too.
When does a poem get its title: before the first line, or after the last?
Why ask it
A title can supply the setting or the occasion so the poem never has to mention it, which is why poets fuss over them. Those who title last often keep a list of the rejects. Ask what a poem you both know was nearly called.
Do endings arrive early, or do you write past them and cut back?
Why ask it
The real ending is often a few lines above where the draft stopped, and a poet who has found that out will tell you about the poem that taught them. Listen for whether they trust a neat closing image or work to avoid one.
How do you know a poem is finished rather than just abandoned?
Why ask it
Expect an admission that the line is blurry. What you are listening for is the check they run: does it hold up cold, does it still surprise them, has it stopped changing on each pass. Vague answers here often mean a deadline decides it.
What can you do in a poem now that you could not when you started?
Why ask it
A better route into how the work has changed than asking for a summary of a career. Answers are concrete: holding one sentence across several stanzas, leaving an ending open, being funny without apologizing for it. The natural follow-up is which early poem they would write differently today.
Do you have a favorite word, or one you have banned yourself from using?
Why ask it
The first half is what a nine-year-old asks at a school visit, and poets enjoy it more than the serious questions. The banned word is the craft answer in disguise: 'heart', 'soul', 'shimmer', whatever they caught themselves leaning on. In a classroom, have everyone offer one of each before the poet answers.
Subjects
What subjects do you keep coming back to, whether you mean to or not?
Why ask it
Poets often learn their own obsessions from a reviewer, or from laying a manuscript out and finding the same river in six poems. The recurring subject that surprised them is the one to follow, and it is a gentler door into personal material than asking about their life directly.
How much do the places you have lived get into the poems?
Why ask it
A street, a coastline or a childhood kitchen can be scenery in one poet's work and the whole subject in another's, and the answer tells you which. With someone who has moved a long way, the follow-up is whether a place gets easier to write about once they have left it.
Do you write or read in more than one language, and what crosses over?
Why ask it
For a bilingual poet this may be the center of the work, and for others it leads to translation, which a good number of poets do alongside their own writing. Listen for a word they say has no equivalent. That word may well be sitting in a poem somewhere.
How much of the 'I' in your poems is you?
Why ask it
The safe way to ask whether the poems are true. It lets the poet talk about a speaker as something made, with details moved or invented, without being asked to confirm facts about their family. If they say the 'I' is always them, the next question is what they leave out.
How do you write about people who are still alive and might read the poem?
Why ask it
There is no settled practice, which is the reason to ask: getting permission, changing details, showing the poem first and publishing regardless all have serious defenders. The detail to listen for is a line that came out because of who would read it. Ask whether anyone has recognized themselves, and what happened.
Which poem was hardest to write, and was it the subject or the making that was hard?
Why ask it
The two kinds of difficulty are different stories. One is about grief or exposure and should be followed gently, if at all. The other is about a stanza that took forty drafts, and if that is the story they choose to tell, do not steer them back to the first.
Is there something you have tried to write about and could not?
Why ask it
The subject that defeats every attempt is often the one that matters most, so the poet may name it and say no more, which is a complete answer. If they do explain why the drafts fail, you are hearing how they tell a true feeling from a sentimental one.
Has a poem ever changed your mind about the thing it was about?
Why ask it
Poets like to say they write to find out what they think, and this asks for the evidence: a poem that set out angry and ended somewhere kinder, or the reverse. The story usually comes with the line where it turned. In a recorded interview, that is the line to have them read.
Do current events find their way into your poems, or do you keep them out?
Why ask it
One camp feels a poet is obliged to answer the news, and the other thinks a poem written this week is stale by next month. Neither is short of reasons, so skip the debate and ask for a poem where they tried it and how it reads to them now.
Audience
Who do you write for: yourself first, or a reader?
Why ask it
Expect the answer to have shifted over the years, and sometimes in the middle of a book. A poet who says purely for themselves is worth asking why they publish, and the reply is usually more thoughtful than the question deserves.
What do you hope someone carries away from one of your poems?
Why ask it
Few poets will say a message. More often it is the sense of having had company, a single image that stays, or the urge to read the poem again. If the answer drifts to what poetry is for in general, bring it back to one poem and one reader.
How do you feel when someone asks what a poem means?
Why ask it
It lets them be candid about a question they get at nearly every event. A poet who explains gladly can be asked about meaning for the rest of the hour, and one who thinks the explanation replaces the poem should be asked how it was made instead.
Has a poem of yours been read in a way you did not intend?
Why ask it
Anyone who has published for a while has this story: the elegy taken for a love poem, the joke taken straight, the breakup poem someone chose for a wedding. Notice whether the misreading annoyed them or whether they came to prefer it.
Why do some poems that work on the page fall flat at a reading?
Why ask it
A poem heard once has no line breaks and no white space. Poets who read often will talk about repetition, sentence length and how much a listener can hold, and the telling detail is which of their own poems they never perform.
How do you choose what to read to a room, and in what order?
Why ask it
Anyone who gives a lot of readings has rules for the set list, such as something funny early so the audience knows laughing is allowed, the hard poem in the middle and a short one to finish. Theirs may be quite different, and either way the rules show how they think a room listens.
Do you get nervous before a reading, and has that changed?
Why ask it
Plenty of poets took up writing because they would sooner not speak in public, then found the job requires it. What they do in the ten minutes before going on is the part any nervous student in the audience will be glad to hear.
What poem would you hand to someone who says they do not like poetry?
Why ask it
The choice shows what the poet thinks puts people off: difficulty, solemnity, the way it was taught. Ask why that one. The reason is usually a compact account of what they believe a poem owes a first-time reader.
Where should a new reader start with your work?
Why ask it
Easy for the poet, who will usually name one poem and not a whole book, and practical for anyone listening. In a recorded interview, ask them to read it. That puts the work itself in front of the audience, which no amount of talk about the work replaces.
Publishing and advice
How does a collection come together, and does the order change what the poems do?
Why ask it
Ordering a book is a craft most readers never see. Expect talk of pages laid out on a floor, of a good poem cut because it repeated what its neighbor did, and of an opening poem chosen to set a tone, not because it was the best one.
How did your first poem get published, and what did that teach you?
Why ask it
The story is usually a small magazine, a long wait and a pile of earlier rejections, and a beginner gets more from it than from general encouragement. How journals, contests and submission fees work differs from country to country, so if you plan to send poems out, ask how it works where they publish.
What do editors change, and when do you push back?
Why ask it
In poetry the argument can be over one comma or one line break. Ask for a change they resisted and one they are now grateful for: the first shows what they consider untouchable, and the second shows how they take advice.
What do workshops get right, and what do they flatten?
Why ask it
Poets who have sat in a workshop, or run one, tend to describe the same risk: a dozen readers sanding a poem toward the taste of the room. The complaint is specific enough to double as advice, especially the piece of group feedback they were right to ignore.
How do you pay for the time to write?
Why ask it
Book sales alone very rarely cover it, so the answer is usually teaching, editing, a job that has nothing to do with writing, a grant or a partner's income. It is a fair question in a long interview and too personal to ask from the floor after a reading. What funding exists depends on the country, so ask what is available where they live.
How do you take a rejection now, compared with the first few?
Why ask it
Anyone who publishes poems has a long record of being turned down, and most will describe it cheerfully once they are past it. Listen for the system: how many journals a poem visits before it is rewritten or retired. Newer writers tend to find the plain bookkeeping of it reassuring.
Has posting poems online changed who reads you, or how you write?
Why ask it
A poet who found readers on a phone screen and one who stays off it entirely have both thought about what a square image does to a long line. Keep your own view out of the question, because the split between page poets and social media poets is a sore subject in some rooms.
What do you make of poems written by AI?
Why ask it
You will get a firm opinion, so ask without showing your own. The useful half of the answer is what they think a reader gets from knowing a person made the poem, which amounts to a statement of what they believe poems are for. With a poet who teaches, the classroom is the richer half of the subject.
What would you tell someone who has just started writing poems?
Why ask it
The first answer is nearly always to read more, so push once: read what, and how? The second answer is where the usable part is, whether that is copying poems out by hand or learning one by heart. For a school interview, this is the one to save time for.
What advice were you given that you are glad you ignored?
Why ask it
Poets get told to write what they know, to stay away from abstractions, to stop rhyming, to find a proper job. Hearing which rule a working poet broke on purpose does more for a beginner than another list of rules.
Is there a poem by someone else you wish you had written?
Why ask it
A closing question that gets an actual title out of them, and often a reason more precise than praise: an ending they could not have arrived at, a risk they would not have taken. It hands you something to go and read.
Talking to a Poet Without Boring Them
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Before the Conversation
Choose a handful, not the whole list
An hour with a poet has room for eight or ten questions if the answers are any good, and a slot after a reading has room for one. Take two from Start here, then choose by what you want to leave with: Process and Craft if you write, Subjects and Audience if you read, and the advice questions at the end of the list if this is for a class.
If the assignment says twenty questions
School and college interview assignments often set a number. For twenty, take the first five in the list and three from each of the other five groups, choosing the ones you could ask about a poem you have read. You will not get through them all, and the poet will not mind.
Read three poems, not the biography
Two or three poems read closely will carry you further than a full bibliography skimmed. Being able to say "the poem with the flooded basement" changes the conversation immediately, because it proves the questions are not interchangeable with the ones asked at the last event.
Find out what they are asked constantly
Search a couple of existing interviews. If three interviewers have already asked when they started writing, you know to ask it from a new side or skip it, and you may find a half-answered thread worth picking up.
Know whether they are also an editor or a teacher
Many working poets hold at least one other role in the field. A poet who edits a journal can tell you what a pile of unsolicited submissions looks like, and a poet who teaches has watched a great many drafts fail in the same few ways. Both are richer seams than general craft talk.
Decide whether you are asking as a reader or a writer
Readers want to know what the poems are doing. Writers want to know how they were made. Mixing the two produces a conversation that keeps changing register, so pick one and let the other come up naturally.
Getting Past the Stock Answers
- Name a specific poem whenever you can. General questions get general answers, and "in the second stanza of that poem about your father" gets you a real one.
- When you hear the word "organic" about process, ask what happened with the most recent poem. The concrete case is almost always more interesting than the description of the method.
- Ask about the version that got cut. Poets remember discarded stanzas and rejected titles vividly, and those choices show the poem's logic better than the finished text does.
- Let a pause run. Poets tend to compose their answers rather than fill air, and interrupting a silence usually costs you the better half of the reply.
- If they say a poem speaks for itself, take that as an answer and move to how it was built rather than what it means.
Where These Conversations Go Wrong
Asking whether the poems are true
The first-person speaker in a poem is not a sworn statement, and treating it as autobiography puts the poet in the position of confirming or denying facts about their family. Ask how much of the 'I' is them, or about the choices in the poem, and the material usually comes up on its own.
Handing over your own poems
Passing your manuscript across a signing table is a common and unwelcome move. If you want feedback, ask whether they take on manuscript consultations or teach anywhere, and accept a no without negotiation.
Treating poetry as one undifferentiated thing
A formalist, a documentary poet, and a performance poet share a label and almost no working method. Questions about what poetry is for tend to land as pop quizzes; questions about what their poems are trying to do land as conversation.
Comparing them to a more famous poet
It is meant as flattery and lands as a claim that their work resembles someone else's. If you noticed a real resemblance, ask about the influence directly and leave the compliment out of it.
Adjusting to the Setting
- After a reading, keep it to one question and make it about something you just heard. The poet is probably tired and there are people behind you in the line.
- For a recorded interview, front-load the craft questions. Poets warm up as they talk and the money and publishing answers come more freely once trust has built.
- For a school interview, send three or four of the questions ahead and say which poem you have read. Finish with the advice question and write the answer down word for word: it is the line your report will quote.
- In a classroom, get students to ask about a specific line each. It produces a better session than open questions, which tend to stall into silence.
- In a private conversation with a friend who writes, ask what they are stuck on. It is the question nobody offers them and often the one they most want asked.