12 or 20 (second series) questions with Matthew Nienow

Matthew Nienow’s recently released collection, If Nothing (Alice James Books, 2025), has been recommended by the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post Book Club, and Poetry Northwest. He is also the author of House of Water (Alice James Books, 2016) and three earlier chapbooks. His poems and essays have appeared in Gulf Coast, Lit Hub, New England Review, Ploughshares, and Poetry, and have been recognized with fellowships from the Poetry Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Artist Trust. He lives in Port Townsend, Washington, with his wife and sons, where he works as a mental health counselor.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
I’m not sure my first book did change my life, though it perhaps coincided with a volatile period in which I did go through some very big changes. I can’t say for sure from this distance, but I likely held some hope that my first book was going to somehow open doors (to where, I don’t really know). All in all, the response was quiet, and this was one of several elements of my life that contributed to a deepening depression and addiction. My drinking, which was already problematic, got worse and worse, and I dove straight to the bottom and stayed there for some time.

When I finally began to get sober eight years ago, it took a great deal of time to get healthy enough to begin writing. Making If Nothing changed me. By going back to the source of pain and betrayal again and again with a hunger for honesty, I had to grow my capacity to be with the parts of myself I couldn’t bear. By doing this, I became more coherent, more resilient, and much more available to my family and friends. Until writing the poems that make up this new collection, there had always been a faint veil between my daily life and my poems. This book erased that separation for me and I haven’t fully metabolized what this means in the larger scope of my life.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I struggled with writing until I was about 20 years old when I took my first creative writing class. It was then that I was first introduced to living poets. Prior to this time, it was epically difficult for me to get even a single page out and my essays and assignments were always far shorter than the stated requirements. So, the fact that I found a life in writing was quite surprising. The typical brevity in poetry, though, really makes sense with that in mind.
 
3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
I tend to bristle at the word “project” when it comes to poetry, though I do understand it as a guiding concept. (More on this in the next question.)

I don’t take notes, but I do revise voraciously, often experimenting with significant changes in form and lineation. It is rare that my finished poems closely resemble their origins. As sound is really important to me, I often record the poems I am working on and listen to them while throwing the ball for my dogs, so I can check what is resonating and what falls flat. This often helps me take the work to the next level.

4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
I consider reading an active part of my writing process; most of my poems begin in the space of reading. I’m looking to be knocked off-kilter, to be stunned away or lulled into a trance. It is in this interstitial space that I can follow the trail of something I can sense, but not yet see clearly.

I tend to draft without a book in mind, which means it can take a great deal of time before I begin to feel something larger growing up between and around the poems. When I do have a critical mass of sorts, I begin to hone myself towards this space without being overly restrictive. It still requires a great deal of patience and the willingness to write a lot of poems that will never leave my desk.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I see readings as adjacent to my creative process. I don’t write towards readings and I am rarely inspired to write by attending readings. With that said, I love doing readings and have devoted a lot of energy to the art and skill of reading and presenting well. It’s always sad and confusing to me how so many poets who make incredible work on the page read in such a dull or off-putting manner. As sound strongly guides me in making and revising my work, I can’t understand how poets who don’t read well relate to their art.
 
6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
This is constantly evolving for me. What I can say is that I see poetry as a place to encounter and wrestle with Truth, in all its varied forms. I am probably most interested in what this means in relation to the human experience. As for questions, I favor the asking over answering. One of the questions I’m currently interested in is: “What is healthy masculinity?”

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
Though they are nearly unavoidable, I think “shoulds” are often limiting and unhelpful expectations. I do, however, have opinions on what the “best” writing might be doing in the world, which is, of course, closely linked with the role of the writer. In the broadest sense, I believe good writers help us to look more closely at the world and ourselves, providing a chance to know and understand and feel the world more deeply.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I think it depends on the editor. For the most part, I am open to feedback, though I have worked very hard to develop and trust my own internal editor. I’m very lucky to have had both of my books with Alice James; they believe in collaborating with poets and the poets have final call on editorial guidance.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
No one does their most important work alone.

10 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
For much of the last twenty years, I kept a pretty consistent practice of starting my day by reading poems and then drafting something new. If time and interest allowed, I could spend anywhere from 30 minutes to four hours revising work later in the day.

I entered a new chapter about two years ago when my older son got me into strength training. Now, I am at the gym first thing about six days a week, which has all but eliminated my decades-long struggle with anxiety. I’ve become more flexible with my writing practice, and now read and write at other times in the day, though I do believe setting a consistent schedule will help me dig in more fully with new work.

11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Almost always to the poems of others. If I can’t find something new and surprising in one of the many lit mags I subscribe to or read online, I turn to the favorites in my home poetry library.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Cedar and salt water.

13 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
I’m also a musician and woodworker, and these have influenced my writing. More so, I find that paying attention to what is happening in my life and the world at large tends to inform the poems I make. Fatherhood and marriage are at the core of my life and so these relationships are sometimes the most significant guiding forces.

14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Larry Levis, Natalie Diaz, Eduardo C. Corral, and Jack Gilbert are some of my favorite poets, though I read widely and am often very taken with single poems from too many poets to name.

Lately, True and False Magic by Phil Stutz has been helping me to grow and move beyond my self-limitations in all areas of my life. It’s an easy read with profound and accessible lessons, but the work of integrating these practices is lifelong work.

15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I have too many hobbies and passions and I know more will be on the way. With that said, I have been a musician and songwriter since the age of 14. I continue to draft songs all the time, but I almost never prioritize completing or recording these. I’d love to actually make an album I’m proud of even if it is just for me.

16 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
I’ve already gone down the rabbit hole on several other careers (boat builder, woodworker, educator, therapist) and many of these continue to be present in my life alongside writing. There were times when I wanted only to be a writer, but I think I do my best writing when I have some friction from another occupation (or two). It keeps the world moving and I have to really choose to make it the page with a bit more urgency.

17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
As someone who also creates in other forms, I go to writing for a certain flavor of magic I find most strongly there. It may also be true that I am most able to finish what I start when it comes to writing. As noted above, my song drafts often remain unfinished and it isn’t always for lack of trying.

18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
The last great book: This is Happiness by Niall Williams. The last great film… To be honest, I spend more time watching shows than movies and a lot of it is entertaining fluff. I enjoy it, but I wouldn’t call it great.

19 - What are you currently working on?
Finishing a sauna and building my therapy practice. As for writing, I’m leaning into essays about a range of topics around healthy masculinity, fatherhood, ADHD. I’m also drafting poems without any specific aim.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Matthew Nienow, If Nothing

 

WHAT LUCK

I lived. Lived again. Wrecked,
hungover. Swerved in the dark
from river back to bunk
and never hit a tree. Never was
pulled over when my only
tongue was Swamp. Locked
my keys in the trunk in a thunder
storm, done hotboxing the Cimarron
with can’t remember, car halfway
in the road. Aura of blunt, pungent
as roadkill skunk. Always made it
home. Always stumbling thick-
tongued, lucky if I didn’t get the spins,
mumbling if I had to speak, numb
thing dump in the truest sense.
floor was floor and I was on it, gone
wind in a way. Also stone.
Somehow sang even undone.
Almost alone, even throned
among future tombs, I lived,
the coal of my heart on a slow
burn, no time to lose, no such
thing as time, eyes turned
to the lack of light, skull
locked tight, crowned alive, the King
of Lost Keys.

I hadn’t heard of Port Townsend, Washington poet and mental health counselor Matthew Nienow before seeing a copy of his second full-length collection, If Nothing (New Gloucester ME: Alice James Books, 2025), following his debut, House of Water (Alice James Books, 2016). Set with an opening and closing poem on either side of five untitled sections of poems, Nienow has articulated a collection of tight, narrative, first-person meditations that offer a purposeful meandering, composing poems that attempt to both place and find himself. “Guilt’s my godfather,” he writes, to open the poem “OWNERSHIP,” “footing all the bills. / Cleaning out my chimney / each spring, bags and bags / of ash. I know how good / I have it. I know.” There’s an honesty to these poems I quite like, as these poems attempt clarity, through the first person lyric, pushing deep into family and addiction, marriage and despair, into the self to examine with a firm hand and straightforward line. The poem “FIVE YEARS NOW” begins: “without a drink, but in dreams / such timelines do not // exist. I can be 12 again, or 20. / I can be in the middle of hurting // myself for the final time, / in the middle of waking up // to whatever wounding meant / to that man almost gone // from every world I’ve known.” There’s some dark years running as undercurrent to this entire collection, as Nienow’s lyrics offer the clarity of held breath and a straight line enough that it might cut into the skin; poems that wrestle with all he ever was, is and could be, writing out what he could be against what he should be; an undertone of what he almost was, each poem, each moment, closer to a clarity and attention that might be a process across the rest of his life. If you’ve ever been attempting or navigating the other side of bad choices, these are poems in that exact space: having emerged, with the shadow of those experiences never fully behind. As the opening poem, “ON THE CONDITION OF BEING BORN,” begins: “As you were, then. As you were / at the moment of your first breath / outside the mother, good / before you knew any other way to be. / Who can remember such a time?”

 

Leigh Sugar, Freeland

 

INHERITANCE

In 1920, my grandfather received an American name:
Zucker to Sugar, now my own last name. 

The Third Reich never tattooed on his forearm
a number. I count myself lucky to have a last name. 

Each April, magnolias litter my parents’ front yard
before Michigan’s spring blizzard exposes its silver face. 

My oldest friend’s surname is Blessing; I know to consider
possible prophecy when giving a name. 

At eight, we jarred petals with perfumes and spices
to capture that early spring teasing embrace. 

I didn’t, back then, know cinnamon from cedar—
those potions turned rancid on shelves, defined waste. 

These days I scrawl 619754
on envelopes after a locked-up beloved’s last name. 

He says, Leigh, I dream I’ve forgotten my number
and wake to realize I’ve forgotten my name.

Michigan “writer, editor, educator, dancer, and, more importantly, learner” Leigh Sugar’s full-length poetry debut is Freeland (New Gloucester ME: Alice James Books, 2025), a collection that opens with the information that “Freeland, Michigan is home to the Saginaw Correctional Facility, a Michigan state prison.” Framed as “an impossible love story,” Freeland “examines the unbreakable bond between the author and an incarcerated writer.” As the press release continues: “Drawing critical connections between personal and family history, the Jewish diaspora, and the racial imaginary of whiteness, Leigh Sugar obsessively searches form and language to communicate what happens in the U.S. mass incarceration system. Expanding out to touch on her own experiences with mental illness and disability, Freeland is a devastating and urgent testimony of love across the physical, political, and social boundaries of the prison industrial complex, interrogating questions of abolition, race, solitude, and memory in poems that simultaneously embody and resist formal structures.”

I’m intrigued by the narrative tensions that Sugar achieves, layering multiple story-elements across carved, crafted lines, allowing the multiple narrative threads an interplay, writing on loss, love, grief and language, wrapping in threads of family story, poetics and how best one might articulate across such potentially vast distances. As she writes as part of the extended sequence “FREELAND: AN ERASURE”: “Not even Eliot or Pound approach the melancholy weapon oof the punitive form. // In profile, I separate from this justice. // Tattoo economy pens my skin into a letter. // Dear anyone.” Freeland exists as an interesting counterpoint to other contemporary literary titles that have explored the prison system, whether Vancouver poet Mercedes Eng writing her father through the poetry collection Prison Industrial Complex Explodes (Vancouver BC: Talonbooks, 2017) [see my review of such here], Kingston writer Diane Schoemperlen’s This Is Not My Life: A Memoir of Love, Prison, and Other Complications (HarperCollins, 2017), or the collaborative study between photographer Deborah Luster and the late American poet C.D. Wright, One Big Self: an investigation (Lost Roads, 2003; Port Townsend WA: Copper Canyon Press, 2007) [see my review of such here]. Sugar centres her specifics around the abstract of human space and interaction, connection and disconnection, composing a lyric of deeply-crafted lines that braid lived experience, whether by the narrator or her “beloved,” across a poetics around human connection, even and especially amid such punitive disruption. “A smile,” she writes, to open the poem “REPRESSION,” “when the officer commands I stop // touching you. The space between shame // and pleasure shorter than the scythe- // shaped stretch of shoulder // revealed when my shirtsleeve slips off // the me whose swift hands leave your neck to right the slip // then return to my own lap. I sag, // guilty, still, still under the camera.”

ARS POETICA
after Hermes, tr. from Arabic by Maged Zaher
 

I want a poetry
that reassembles the body 

that is 

investigates love
how it is not enough 

that is 

what prison taught me
teaches me 

that is 

I want to not be lonely

 

Mia Ayumi Malhotra, Mothersalt

 

Like an object from space, birth language is a sign of alien life: Mucus plug. Meconium. Also the language of newborns, with its twisted syntax of sleepless nights and bleary, milk-washed mornings. Rooting, latch. Fore- and hindmilk. For now, this private lexicon of flutter kick, swim. What feels like a heart, tumbling through the body. (“MOTHERSALT”)

From San Francisco Bay Area poet Mia Ayumi Malhotra comes the collection Mothersalt (New Gloucester ME: Alice James Books, 2025), following her full-length debut, Isako Isako (Alice James Books, 2018) and subsequent chapbook, Notes from the Birth Year (Bateau Press, 2022) [see my review of such here]. “I am beautiful with you. I wear you emblazoned across my face,” she writes, as part of the title prose sequence, “herald of my life to come.” Set with opening and closing poems on either side of three sections of meditative, first-person lyrics, Mothersalt expands the boundaries of her Notes from the Birth Year, offering a book-length suite of poems that provide an exploration, a grounding, on pregnancy and mothering, motherhood and family. “Tell me again about mothering. About the form it takes.” she writes, to open the poem “ON MOTHERING.” There is something deeply intimate and immediate about how she approaches these poems, akin to notes from a journal, carved and honed across graceful lines and still waters, run deep: “How language dawns slowly,” the opening poem, “WHERE POEMS COME FROM,” offers, “then all at once. / The dry, whitish lid working its way, reptilelike, / up the bird’s eye. This isn’t really about the duck, / the pointing. The point is that I saw you seeing / a creature for the first time—paused motionless / on the bridge, bits of debris shifting understood. / Every day you make some new utterance—ball, / more, meow—closing the space between the world / you live in and your name for it.”

Mothersalt exists as a book of breath and simultaneous exploration of the interplay between lyric and motherhood, and how one might inform or shift the other; of a rich and densely-lyric musicality, one that approaches the poem from the foundation first of form. It is fascinating to see the shape of Malhotra’s approach, focusing her lyric as a conversation around form, both poetic and personal, and how the boundaries of each might be expanded, well beyond anything she might have expected. “Tell me about the form mothering takes on the page.” she writes, as part of the poem “ON FORM,” a poem that also includes:

When I became a mother, my lines began to grow less regular, less sculpted—and this itinerant prose did not adhere to shapeliness.

Instead it spilled from birth into death and questions of beauty, arranging itself as it wished.

An artful, yet imperfect text.