Questions to Ask Poets
Poets get asked the same three questions at every event: where do you get your ideas, when did you start writing, and what does this one mean. These twenty-one go at the working parts instead: how a draft begins, what gets cut, how a collection is ordered, what a reading demands that the page does not, and how the writing gets paid for. Suited to an interview, a question session after a reading, or a long conversation with a friend who writes.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What are you working on right now?
Why ask it
Opens on the thing they are closest to rather than the book that came out two years ago and has been discussed to exhaustion. If the answer is guarded or vague, they may be in the early stage where talking about a project dissolves it, which is itself worth respecting.
What are you reading at the moment, poetry or otherwise?
Why ask it
Reading habits map onto the writing more reliably than a list of influences does. Poets often name history, field guides, or court transcripts here, and those answers tell you where the diction in the poems is coming from.
Which of your own poems do you still like reading out loud?
Why ask it
Poets rarely rate their work the way readers do. The poem they still enjoy performing is usually the one that survived the most revision or the one that risks something, and it gives you a specific text to talk about instead of the collection in general.
Do poems start with a line, an image, or something you are trying to work out?
Why ask it
This distinguishes writers who begin with sound from writers who begin with an argument, and the two revise in opposite directions. Anyone who says all three should be asked which one their most recent poem began with.
Where and when do you actually write?
Why ask it
The practical answer is more informative than the romantic one. Early mornings before a shift, a notes app on a bus, or a fixed three hours all shape the length and the density of what gets made.
How long does a poem take from the first notes to something you would show anyone?
Why ask it
The range is wide enough to be revealing: some poets finish in a sitting and some sit on drafts for years. Ask for the longest and the shortest rather than the average, because the outliers are where the interesting stories are.
Do you read drafts aloud, and what does that catch?
Why ask it
The answer usually turns technical fast: a clumsy consonant cluster, a line break that nobody breathes at, a sentence that runs out of air. It is the fastest route from vague talk about music to what the poet is really listening for.
What do you cut first when you revise?
Why ask it
Almost every working poet has a personal list of tics they hunt: adjectives, the last two lines, the abstract noun in the final stanza, the explanation they added for the reader. If they cannot name one, they may not revise much.
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 test they use: 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.
Do you write in received forms, and what does a form let you do that free verse does not?
Why ask it
Poets who use form tend to describe it as pressure rather than decoration: the rhyme demands a word they would not have chosen, and that word takes the poem somewhere. Poets who avoid form usually have an equally specific reason worth hearing.
Which poet did you have to get out of your system?
Why ask it
More honest than asking about influences, because it names the imitation stage everyone passes through. The answer often explains a habit still visible in their work, whether that is long syntax, short lines, or a taste for the plain sentence.
Whose work do you go back to when the writing stalls?
Why ask it
The rereading list is small and it is chosen for use rather than admiration. Poets often name a book they keep by the desk purely because it restarts them, which is a different thing from their favourite book.
What makes a poem work at a reading when it works fine on the page?
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 what an audience can hold, and they usually have poems they will not perform for exactly these reasons.
How do you feel when someone asks what a poem means?
Why ask it
This gives them permission to be candid about a question they field constantly. Some will explain gladly, some think the explanation replaces the poem, and either answer tells you how to talk about their work for the rest of the conversation.
What happens to the poems that never come right?
Why ask it
Failed drafts are where most of the work actually goes. Some poets mine them for lines years later, some delete on sight, and the answer says a lot about how much they trust their own judgement in the moment.
How does a collection come together, and does the order change what the poems do?
Why ask it
Sequencing is a craft most readers never think about. Expect talk of laying pages out on a floor, of poems that had to be cut because they answered too neatly, and of an opening poem chosen to set a tone rather than because it was the best one.
What did publishing teach you that writing on its own did not?
Why ask it
Separates the art from the trade. Answers tend to cover contests and reading fees, how long journals take, the difference an editor made, and how little the acceptance changed the writing itself.
Does knowing a particular person will read it change what you put in a poem?
Why ask it
Poetry drawn from a life implicates other people. This asks how they handle it without accusing them of anything, and the answers range from changing details to showing the poem to the person first to publishing and living with the fallout.
What do workshops get right, and what do they flatten?
Why ask it
Anyone who has taught or attended one has opinions here, usually about the way group feedback smooths a poem toward the group's taste. The complaint is specific enough to double as advice for your own writing.
How do you pay for the time to write?
Why ask it
Almost nobody lives on poetry sales. Teaching, editing, unrelated day jobs, a partner's income, and grants are the usual answers, and hearing them dismantles the assumption that publication is a living.
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
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 already asked when they started writing, you now know which twenty minutes not to spend, and you may find a half-answered thread worth picking up.
Know whether they are also an editor or a teacher
Most working poets hold at least one other role in the field. A poet who edits a journal can tell you what a slush pile looks like; a poet who teaches has watched hundreds of 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 about the choices in the poem instead, and the material usually comes up on its own.
Requesting an interpretation of your own writing
Handing over your manuscript at 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 reads 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 rather than framing it as a compliment.
Adjusting to the Setting
- After a reading, keep it to one question and make it about something you just heard. The poet is 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.
- 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.