KARAN

Mikko, I sense in your poems a deep love of language — as if you’re chasing the words to see where they will lead the speaker, the poem. The run-on sentences that make me breathless as I read, the labyrinthine digressions that now seem to be a part of your style. A kind of exploration of the self through language. Would you try to delineate for us your writing process? How do you begin, write, and finish a poem? Do you begin from a specific element — image, idea, memory, or thought, for example — or do these elements form in tandem with each other? Which is also to ask, where do your poems come from? And why do you write?

MIKKO

I think your question contains part of my answer: “a kind of exploration of the self through language.” As an introvert, for better or worse, I tend to process my life internally, and this creates a renewable resource that feeds my poems.

These days writing mostly takes two forms for me: fragment-writing and poem-writing. Fragment-writing happens whenever a fragment comes to mind — it could be a phrase, some found text, a few lines, a memory, or even just a single word. I have a big Word document named “scraps” that’s full of these. Then there is poem-writing, which is less of a language event and more of what I think of as a brain event. It involves slipping into a state of mind where language feels loaded with potential, and lines seem to connect with unusual clarity. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, I usually get a poem out of it. Weirdly — sometimes frustratingly — my writing process seems to have little to do with how hard I work on my poems or how deeply I think about them, and almost everything to do with whether or not these brain events happen, and how I react during the brief time that they last. 

The brain events often result in a poem being written in a single session. “Dirty Poem” and “Purple Cabbages” are examples of this. “Treason” was two separate brain events that took place years apart and happened to fit together, which accounts for the sudden turn in the poem. Then there are times when the brain event takes more of a collage form, and that’s when the scraps come into play, growing or combining into full poems. That’s how “Fly Flying into a Mirror” and “Wind-Related Ripple in the Wheatfield” came together. “Wind-Related Ripple in the Wheatfield” contains scraps from as early as 2012 and as late as 2021.  

The final part of the process is revision, which is not so much a language event or a brain event, but a tinkering event. It’s often about trying to find the right ending.  

KARAN

Possibly my most favorite lines here are: “I am okay / at writing poems about love, / but bad at actually loving.” For some reason, it makes me think of Leonard Cohen — not that I think he was bad at loving, but he’d share that sentiment and articulate it similarly. I see that under the surface of your poems is a longing for understanding, the struggle to connect and express oneself without any barriers. Are you preoccupied with the complexities of human communication and the inherent gaps that exist between individuals, despite their attempts to bridge them? Is poetry a way for you to understand better, or make someone see you, understand you? 

MIKKO

A big yes to all of this, except for one small no. I do think I originally started writing poems, at least partly, because I was such a shy and anxious person. Writing felt like an alternative way of connecting, one that wasn’t so fraught and terrifying. Although I feel somewhat less terrified of the world now, that original impulse to connect is probably still at the core of why I write.

The small no is that I don’t write with the hope of making other people understand me, at least not consciously. At this point, I just write with the hope of better understanding (and inhabiting) myself and the world around me. I think if my goal was to be understood by other people, the poems would come out differently. 

KARAN

If it’s not already clear, Mikko, I’m a fan of your love poems. In a way all your poems are love poems — love for people, animals, family. I love it when a love poem is also a political poem, as it often is. I also appreciate how unafraid you are when it comes to writing sex — “I love / making you cum / more than almost / anything.” I’m interested in the intersection of love poems and political poems. I’m also thinking of “Wind-related Ripple in the Wheatfield” which made me weep like a baby — that poem has so many political connotations. Does this intersection interest you in any way? Are all poems inherently political by virtue of us being sociocultural beings?

MIKKO

There are so many levels to what is political, including big, devastating, life-or-death ones that I can’t pretend like my poems engage with in any meaningful way. But I agree that poems are political by virtue of us being sociocultural beings, so there are political elements to what I include or exclude in my poems, as well as the way I position the speakers of my poems, maybe especially in love poems. For example, that line you’re quoting — “I love / making you cum / more than almost / anything” — I remember having an internal debate about whether or not to publish this poem. Like, is it going to be perceived as a weird flex that I mention making my partner cum? Am I participating in a tradition of men bragging about sexual experiences in a way that belittles or erases their partners? But then again, to get maybe awkwardly specific, that line is about fingering — is having a good experience with fingering really such a dudely flex, or is it just a result of having done some basic communication and exploration with your partner? On the other hand, could gesturing toward having done this communication and exploration be an act of signaling a false humility that seemingly prioritizes the experience of my partner, but in fact is ultimately self-serving? You can go around in circles, because being a sociocultural being means you’re part of this ever-shifting web of actions, perceptions, and implications.  

This is when it becomes important for me to know, even if it’s just for myself, that I am not writing poems to make readers understand me or think anything in particular about me. If I was thinking about the impression I was creating of Mikko Harvey the person, I probably wouldn’t have written that line. But I trust the place where this poem comes from. I also know the person who is described in the poem, and I know our relationship, and I know what she thinks about the poem. None of this means I am conclusively right or wrong, but it means I can feel okay about putting my name on it.

KARAN

“Dirty Poem” is such a tender poem, so full of heart. I love it. You’re taking on so much here: your relationship with your father, mental health, sexual intimacy, reading Henri Cole, and the segues are fantastic! And in “Treason:” “no greater crime / than disrupting your steady, / peaceful breathing.” Is tenderness a preoccupation for you? We live in a world where beauty, joy, tenderness gets unnoticed — and sometimes rightly so (because, let me quote Marwan Makhoul here: “In order for me to write poetry that isn’t political / I must listen to the birds / and in order to hear the birds / the warplanes must be silent”) — is that something you think about? It is crucial to witness and document the world burning, especially in the times we’re living in, so where does this tenderness and beauty lie in the equation? How important is it, in the face of everything violent that the world is witnessing?

MIKKO

That Marwan Makhoul quote is excellent. Even when beauty is going unnoticed for good reasons, and the most important thing is for those reasons to be addressed through actions, you can’t forget beauty is there. Not that I think beauty really needs an advocate — it doesn’t, because it’s always present, announcing itself, creating more of itself — but sometimes we need to be nudged into being more conscious noticers and more tender experiencers. For one thing, the absence of this tenderness is probably one of the causes of the violence you are describing. For another, if you move through your life without really feeling it, are you really living it? I think we are good at going through the motions, convincing ourselves we are fully present, when in fact we are just sending forth some representative sliver of our inner self to be our public face. Or am I the only one who does that? Anyway, it’s one reason I find relationships fascinating — they are a constant living test of this.

KARAN

Let’s speak about humor. I wouldn’t think of these poems as necessarily funny, but there’s so much playfulness that comes in from the absurd, mock-heroic voice, especially in “Sap and Kale.” The love for language I mentioned earlier is where I feel the playfulness arises in your work. It reminds me of Bob Hicok, who is my most favorite poet ever. I’ll mention him again soon. But before that, what are your thoughts on humor and play in poetry? I ask this because I note we’ve consistently published poetry the heart of which is play, as we feel it’s somewhat lacking in poetry of the last decade. 

MIKKO

I think poetry and humor are siblings. They are both ways of saying: hey, here is a new and possibly strange way of looking at things. They are both about surprise. They succeed by cutting against the grain of expectation, and part of their art is getting the audience to take that journey with you. For me, the closest art form to poetry is probably stand-up comedy — even in my poems that aren’t funny at all — because the tools feel similar. 

Of course, there are other poets who view poetry as more similar to music, memoir, painting, philosophy, etc., and I love that the house of poetry is big enough to accommodate all these different rooms — it might be my favorite thing about poetry.

KARAN

If I show these poems without your name affixed to them, anyone familiar with your work would instantly be able to tell that these are Mikko Harvey’s poems. You have a distinct voice, something all writers and poets and filmmakers and visual artists hope to create for themselves. I can tell your poems apart from others like I can do with my most favorite writers, like one can tell a Picasso painting from others. At once intimate, melancholic, nonchalant, inventive, whimsical, rhythmic, tender, full-of-love, your voice magnificently captures the full range. Here’s a question about capital-V “Voice” — is poetic voice something one “finds”? If so, how did you find/construct yours? Is the work toward having a “unique poetic voice” a worthy occupation? 

MIKKO

For me, poetic voice is less about building up and more about cutting down. I think we all have beautiful, musical, resonant, clear-headed perceptions inside us. It’s just that we also have a bunch of obstacles — ego, fatigue, self-doubt, cliché, rationalization, etc. When any of these forces have control of my mind, poems don’t happen — or if they do happen, they come out feeling lifeless. But if I can get past the obstacles, then maybe I can touch the clear good part. 

And I do think it’s a worthy occupation. It’s so impractical to be an artist in the first place, you may as well try and go all the way, and swim in your dream as far as you can, as Yoko Ono says. 

Also, your question is an incredible compliment. Thank you.

KARAN

You’re welcome. And I love that way of thinking about voice! I also love your line-breaks. I’m thinking about shortness/crispness of line, rhythm, breath. I’ve long been intrigued by your use of the short line. I see how it adds to the rhythm and makes me want to keep reading with a kind of desperation. I was wondering if you’d speak about your fascination with the short line? What does the short line do for you or the subject of your poems? Also, you don’t have to answer this but are the short lines part of your voice, or style? Is there a difference between voice and style? Would you think aloud about this?

MIKKO

I agree that line length has an effect on rhythm, which in turn has an effect on voice, which then trickles down into almost everything else. I think there’s also something about the attitude that the poem projects. Writing in short lines means breaking on words you wouldn’t normally expect poems to break on, which can create a more conversational experience, making it feel like less of a formal event — which isn’t inherently good or bad, but does generally align with the spirit of the poems I’m trying to write. At the same time, super short lines can serve to defamiliarize language, pushing you to navigate syntax and emphasis in unusual ways. I think it’s this combination that appeals to me — inviting yet unfamiliar. An example I love is “Peanut Butter” by Eileen Myles, where the impact of the short lines, seemingly casually broken, is integral to the poem’s world-building. 

I also just love how super short-lined poems look, like rows of ants. 

KARAN

Hah, such a delightful image, Mikko! You have a deeply inventive grip on blending the surreal-absurd with a simple, sincere story. I love how you constantly play with many degrees of separation in the surreal and mesmerizing language. Unlike traditional surrealism where reality is distorted in a dream-like way, your flavor of surrealism seems to hint toward an extension of reality, a kind of “normal” that has been slightly altered, or even hoped for, say, with the unending row of purple cabbages. Does this make sense to you? What is it about the fantastic, the surreal, the fabulous, that appeals to you so greatly? Is it an attempt to escape, a way to extend “reality”? What is it that you’re trying to say that can’t be said in any other way? 

MIKKO

This makes perfect sense to me, and I love the way you describe it. For me, surrealism is defined by contrast. If a piece of art occupies an entirely surreal world, it becomes realism within its context. I think the tension, or the toggling, between realism and surrealism is the juicy part. Being at least somewhat grounded in reality allows those surreal extensions to carry emotional weight. I tend to be less interested in surrealism that makes me think “wow, trippy” and more interested in surrealism that makes me think “wow, sad” or “wow, true.” In other words, I don’t view surrealism as an attempt to escape reality, but rather an attempt to stay connected to the surreal qualities of the world we live in. 

KARAN

The reason I sometimes feel disenchanted with poetry is its elitist and inaccessible nature. What I most love about your poems is that they’re so accessible. There’s not a single word in most of your poems a child wouldn’t get, and yet the emotion and experience behind the language churns up currents that are so relevant and resonant with anyone who reflects on the human condition.

It is my intention to listen 

but my hands keep giggling while reminding me 

I don't get to be a human being

for very long, as if this were the punchline to a joke 

whose first half I missed.

I love how you’re able to explore great abstractions of love, intimacy, grief, compassion without ever getting abstract in your poems. Is it a conscious decision for you to write in an everyday colloquial way?

MIKKO

I think I decided early on that I wanted my poems to be understandable by anybody who wanted to understand them, and I’ve been riding the wave of that decision ever since. It’s instinctual now, as opposed to a conscious decision, but it’s true that for me the challenge is to create textured, resonant poems out of the same language I use in my daily life. It’s a challenge that I feel only underscores the mystery of poetry — because it reminds me that poetry, at its core, isn’t about your vocabulary or your knowledge of literary history. It’s about some deeper undercurrent that connects the reader to the poem. 

That said, so much of the poetry I love to read is totally different from the poetry that I write. One of my favorite books is Coeur de Lion by Ariana Reines, which is super intellectual, referencing French philosophers and literary theorists, yet also super personal. And I love poets whose work seems inaccessible on the surface, yet still manages to build toward wonderful meaning — like John Ashbery and Mei Mei Berssenbrugge. I love poets who warp syntax in ways that don’t enshroud their language but instead enliven it — like Carl Phillips, Jos Charles, Graham Foust. And I love poets who make rhyme feel organic — like Maggie Millner in Couplets or Vidyan Ravinthiran in The Million-petalled Flower of Being Here. 

KARAN

Lately, we’ve been asking seasoned poets for advice for young writers. Now, you’re not “old” in the scheme of things, but you’ve had books published that are well acclaimed and you have a bunch of experience as an editor too. So, what is something you’d like to say to young writers, as way of advice or caveats?

MIKKO

My advice is to write the thing that feels true, even if it seems too dark, too revealing, too risky, too silly. The world does not need more good poems. What the world needs is the thing that you can give that nobody else can. It needs the pure thing. So don’t filter yourself. If what you write is too intense, don’t worry, we’ll filter it ourselves. We’re great at filtering.

There is a simple test I’ve sometimes used. After writing a poem, ask yourself: would anybody else have written this? It’s okay if the answer is yes — after all, there are lots of amazing poets out there, and there’s nothing wrong with being similar to them. But things really get exciting when the answer is no.