C O M P : Congratulations on the publication of So Much More: Abstracts, Unfinished Sequences, and Political Prose Poems (Harbor Editions, 2024). It’s an extraordinary collection—at once cohesive and, as the title and subtitle suggest, resistant to cohesion. So let’s begin there: Is this your literary version of a B-side album, a gathering of poems that variously escaped a previous collection(s)?

Darren C. Demaree: It is. Writing book-length sequences is an incredibly hard thing to do. I map them out like you would map out long fiction. I plan the music, the rise and fall of the energy, I choose phrases and words to repeat like they’re fence posts for the reader to follow, and ultimately an arrival or a decision or a catastrophe at the end. Trying to execute that in a 172-poem sequence (the three book-length sequences that make up my collection, Many Full Hands Applauding Inelegantly) or a 702-poem sequence (written as Trump as a Fire Without Light, published in an edited version as A Fire Without Light) can be done, but the level of difficulty is high. So, even if there is really good poetry in there, stand-out sections or poems, the possibility of it working as a whole project is minimal. I wanted to go back to the failed ones and see if I could quilt a collection out of that work. Thankfully, the themes and experiments of those projects spoke to each other and I was able to do it. The only failure that can come is the failure to not write at all. If I write a bad poem or a book that doesn’t quite work how I intended to, I’m still proud I wrote it, and more than likely I learned something in the trying. I love the process way more than I love the final form. I suppose that gets me in trouble, because I rarely celebrate the victories of publishing. I say thank you a lot, and I keep working.

C: Though it consists of many sections, So Much More essentially toggles between two distinct modes: dense, unpunctuated prose poems and spare, lyric lineated poems. We loved these shifts. Can you describe your writing process in relation to these general modes? How do you make decisions regarding rhythm and visual layout?

DCD: I love the challenge of experimenting. I move project to project, and I change the terms of engagement. I have “my voice,” the poems that are my natural and unique cadence of poetry (the Emily as… poems), and I return to them between larger projects, but if I’m not writing those then I’m normally trying to push the work into different structures. Honestly, I want to see what happens. It’s invention for the sake of invention. I think that’s well-represented in this book. In the end, it was a challenge of ordering this one so that those inventions would speak to each other in a way that elevated the whole project. The shifts have to work with and against each other. In terms of the visual layout, I like to consider the poems as text, as visual art, and (with an audience) performance pieces. Sometimes they’ll be more successful in one of those modes than the others, but I want all those tools at the ready when I’m drafting.

C: The collection’s heightened emphasis on labeling—abstracts, unfinished sequences, political prose poems—excites us. The adjectives “unfinished” and “political” are particularly compelling. Why does the book insist on such labels? What do you hope they provide for readers?

DCD: I loved the friction that added to the whole project. It’s an unsettled entry point. The book begins with the title. It’s not just a placeholder for the cover. Let the inciting incident start before you read the first poem.

C: One of our favorite sequences in the book is “with an empathy so fatal.” Would you mind discussing the role of empathy in this sequence or in your poetics generally?   

DCD: That’s the sequence that keeps the whole book together. I think every book has a cornerstone poem or section, and “with an empathy so fatal” is that for this book. I think empathy is the most important thing we’re fighting to keep important in this country right now. It opens us up to be an actual community and not just a predatory state. It comes with a cost though, a vulnerability, and I wanted to express that in my most vulnerable way, through what I teach my children. Empathy in poetics is important, because it allows your voice to be other things. Poetry without empathy is a different thing entirely. I think poetry examining where empathy has been forgotten or erased can be some of our most important political work right now.

C: When discussing So Much More in preparation for this interview, we praised at length its vitality—the ways in which it foregrounds writing (and the writing life) as a primarily social practice: “No one can stop you from becoming a siren speak to sing to cry to trumpet gin up a proper crowd let them see [. . .]” (41). You made us feel alive, seen, included. How did this strain of your poetry develop? Who were your models?

DCD: I think from the time I was in college and I found poets like Wanda Coleman, Harryette Mullen, Claudia Rankine, Terrence Hayes, Tyrone Williams, and Wendell Berry I was inspired to write political poems, ornery poems, poems that fight back or stand up. I don’t have the same tenor or experiences of those poets, but their work is so incredibly inspiring to me. Their work is a challenge I didn’t want to back away from in my own process.

C: Finally, what are you working on now? And where else can our readers find your work?

DCD: This is a big year for me actually. My next book is a selected poems book, Now Flourish Northern Cardinal (Selected Poems 2005-2025), and that will come out from Small Harbor Publishing in November of this year. So, really, my whole year is going to revolve around that. I’m always writing, and right now I’m working on a new sequence, What We Called Fruit. We’ll see if it can stand up on its own once I finish drafting the poems.

Darren C. Demaree grew up in Mount Vernon, Ohio. He is a graduate of the College of Wooster, Miami University, and Kent State University. He is the author of twenty-three poetry collections, most recently So Much More (Small Harbor Publishing, November 2024). He is the recipient of a Greater Columbus Arts Council Grant, an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, the Louise Bogan Award from Trio House Press, and the Nancy Dew Taylor Award from Emrys Journal.  He is the Editor-in-chief of the Best of the Net Anthology and Managing Editor of Ovenbird Poetry.  He is currently working in the Columbus Metropolitan Library system, and living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.