KARAN

Luisa, thank you for these deeply moving and compelling poems. I’m particularly taken by how you weave together the personal and the cultural, especially in your exploration of immigrant experience and memory. In “Light Crimes, a Love Story,” you write, “And maybe you don’t see it at first but this story is romantic. The middle of the night, two young immigrants in love in an alleyway, matching leather jackets, and my mother’s red lips shining in the moonlight.” Let’s begin with the process question. How do you approach writing a poem? Do you start with an image, a line, or an idea? Do you have a writing routine? And most importantly, why poetry? 

LUISA

Karan, thank you so much for this thoughtful question. When I was younger, routine and process were enormously important to me. I would light candles and sit by the same window in my old apartment. I’d make tea and really let my mind wander into the abyss of poetic language. Now that I work full time and have three young children (7, 5, and an almost 2-year-old) I generally live in the abyss. I am never far from poetry because my children lead me into it with their constant observations of the world. I’ll be making a grilled cheese sandwich and my son will randomly ask me what the moon tastes like and before I answer him my other son asks me which one of us was born first and now he's upset that I was born before him and now I am in the middle of a poem and I haven’t even finished making lunch. In my poems, I often start with an image or a line. I’ve tried to start with an idea but that rarely works out for me. 

To answer the impossible question of “Why poetry?” Because I need poetry. Because I need poetry to open the door to its house while I’m standing outside in the rain holding a boombox. Because language fails me so often but like the annoying couple in every rom-com we will fight but we will end up together. And you might think, “they don’t make sense” and that’s ok, I don’t need that from poetry, or the world for that matter.  

KARAN

Your poems often touch on your Ukrainian heritage, particularly memories of Odesa. In “Into Oblivion,” you write, “At the market in Odessa / my grandfather waits for me...once again I am too American / for this moment.” I love that — there’s so much pain, sadness, and even shame in that admittal. How do you navigate writing about home, especially in the context of the ongoing war in Ukraine? Does poetry serve as a way to preserve or process these memories and connections? 

LUISA

My family came to the United States right before the collapse of the Soviet Union. It would be years before we could visit and by then the home in our memory was transformed and in so many ways so were we. We came as refugees which means we didn’t really have a sense of where we were going or what that home would be like. I have this vivid memory of climbing into the minivan of our American sponsors at the Kansas City Airport. I was worried I’d forget my great-grandmother’s long braid, her voice, the taste of strawberries at the market, the black sea, and I began to run images through my mind as a way to rebuild that world. I think I’ve been doing that ever since. Maybe that’s why so many of my poems are built around images. I told myself that after my first book, I would stop writing so much about Ukraine and my family but as I’ve gotten older I’ve realized that I will spend the rest of my life writing about them. Somewhere at the bottom of these piles of poems is the overwhelmed little girl sitting in that minivan, I’m not necessarily trying to find her, I’m trying to pull her through the world. 

Writing about the war has been incredibly difficult, almost impossible. Everything I’ve written has been a failure. I’m still working through it but I would say that there are some tremendous Ukrainian authors and translators doing amazing work. The Odesa Poetry studio is a wonderful project that provides resources and space for children to write poems during this time. I highly recommend checking it out.  

KARAN

The other side of your poems is the playfulness. I love how you use humor in your poems, even when dealing with serious subjects. “Everything is Sexy” and “Woman Posting in Parenting Forum” both demonstrate this wonderfully. What are your thoughts on humor in writing? How do you approach balancing humor with heavy themes? Is humor a way to make difficult subjects more accessible, or does it serve another purpose in your work? 

LUISA

Thank you for bringing up humor in poetry! For me, humor is so many things. Yes, it is a way to make the impossible possible, the heavy more accessible, but it is also a way to let myself have joy in the midst of utter despair. I’m an extremely private person so instead of telling you about something potentially traumatic about my past I’d rather tell you about a rabbi and a priest at a bar. If you laugh at the end of the joke I’m no longer trauma dumping I’m trauma relieving myself in a ladylike manner.  

KARAN

In “Self-Portrait As Midwestern Grocery Store,” you write, “And maybe I'm not cut out / for the real world or the fresh produce / section, which makes sense because I was born / right after Chornobyl exploded.” This is a brilliant poem through and through. Its many layers baffle me with the skill with which they’re interweaved. You’re also hat-tipping to a tradition of poetry/art here. Does the self-portrait format provide a unique way to explore identity and experience? 

LUISA

Absolutely it does! I have several self-portrait poems in my new book and honestly, I have always been fascinated with artist self-portraits. Since I can’t paint, I do what I can with language. And since I don’t have access to cathedrals I make due with grocery stores, Cheesecake Factories, and football fields.  

KARAN

What are your thoughts on the intersection of politics and poetry? Your poems seem completely aware of the relationship between personal and collective trauma. Would you like to speak about this? 

LUISA

There is so much I can say about this but I’ll try to be somewhat concise. To me, poetry and politics cannot be separated. I can’t think of anything more political than language. So much of how we think of ourselves and others is rooted in language. How I understand myself and other human beings who I share this world with is so much the project of my poetry, what could possibly be more political? 

KARAN

“Instead of Ascending” (amazing title!) references Gerald Stern and engages with Jewish identity: “but instead of ascending / into the world of the pastoral / I will behave like a Jew / and mourn the dead bird.” How does your Jewish identity inform your poetic sensibilities? Leonard Cohen once said in an unforgettable interview: “My heart was circumcised in the Jewish tradition.” Do you find yourself in conversation with other Jewish poets? 

LUISA

Oh man, I love that Leonard Cohen quote. That’s also a really interesting question! I’ve always had a somewhat complicated relationship with my Jewish identity, especially given my Soviet background. In the Soviet Union, Jewish people faced so much discrimination and isolation and because of this, there is actually so much I don’t know about Judaism. In the Soviet Union, it was a sweater of identity you couldn’t take off. You were Jewish no matter what you did or how you lived your life. In Odesa, the Jewish community was held together by family, anecdotes, and history. I don’t always know the right prayers but I do know how my grandmother’s survived the Holocaust and I know Gerald Stern’s poetry. His poems are large enough for me and my questions. He often has his own. 

KARAN

There’s a school of poetry that believes a poem or a poet can categorize their work in one of these four ways: poetry of the body, poetry of the mind, poetry of the heart, poetry of the soul. Where would you place your work within this framework, if at all? And do you see your poetry moving to a different direction? 

LUISA

I want to be something cool like poetry of the soul or of the mind but I am absolutely poetry of the heart with an occasional splash of poetry of the body. My children have evaporated me into a sentimental cloud and I’m about a dozen poems away from writing poems that will get framed and sold in the clearance section of a Home Goods. 

KARAN

I’m intrigued also by how food appears in your poems — strawberries in Odesa versus Costco strawberries, baloney sandwiches, syrniki. In “As I Get Closer to Death I Become Full Poem,” you write “The strawberries in my memory / aren’t of course strawberries at all / they are similes of what was left behind.” Will you speak about the role of food in your poetry and how it connects to memory and identity? 

LUISA

For me, I tend to think of image as an entryway into identity and culture. Particularly when thinking about “formative foods.” Either food that some of my deceased family members made that is perhaps the quickest way for me to remember them or food that I associate with a place I can no longer access. My grandfather passed away several years ago but I can’t drink a cup of Lipton tea without thinking about him pouring my tea into a saucer because I was too young to drink it correctly out of a cup. This memory isn’t necessarily about the taste of the tea but about the act of love that tastes like watered-down tea because he would always reuse the same teabag until my dad would make him open a new one. 

KARAN

Congratulations on your upcoming books, I Make Jokes When I’m Devastated and When the World Stopped Touching! 2025 is going to be extraordinary for you! Could you tell us about your journey to these collections, and about the collections per se?

LUISA

Admittedly these books feel like a not-so-small miracle. I Make Jokes When I’m Devastated has been the result of years of meditation on my family history and my place in this world as a mother. It’s a lot of pressure being a parent, at times you can feel like Virgil leading Dante through the darkness of the underworld, except that world can look like the bowels of a Chuck E Cheese or a rusty slide in front of our apartment building in Odesa. How do I explain war or genocide to my children? How do I explain a soul or why our family history is not immune to violence? After my first book, I had a difficult time writing (as I think so many poets do that are removed from the immediate writing community that a writing program provides). I’d sort of bury the seeds of poems in my brain and continue to move through the world. Every few months I’d essentially vomit a poem out, like some kind of lyric owl pellet. Then, one day, things got really hard, and my mental health collapsed. It was poetry (and the support of my family) that brought me back to myself. Adam Zagajewski’s “Learn to Praise the Mutilated World” was the crumbs that got me out of the forest. I repeat this poem to myself often in a way it is in conversation with so much of I Make Jokes When I’m Devastated. 

I have to give so much credit to my poetry sister, Julia Kolchinsky, for the existence of When the World Stopped Touching. During the COVID lockdowns, we were both in eerily similar life circumstances with children who were essentially the same age,, and the difficulty of parenting through that time was wearing both of us down. One day, Julia asked if I would be up for exchanging letter poems with each other and what started as a fun writing exercise ended up in a complex collection that dove into our present moment and our family history. 

KARAN

As a member of the Cheburashka Collective, how do you see the role of community in supporting poets, particularly those writing from immigrant experiences? What has being part of this collective meant for your work? 

LUISA

These days I barely exist on the internet but a few years ago I was really struggling to find any sort of writing community where I was living. Growing up in between cultures I always felt not unlike Cheburashksa who was found in a crate of oranges and sent to live at the zoo (where they were also rejected). When I stumbled into this group I was overjoyed to know that there were other writers with eerily similar backgrounds and experiences. After having felt so culturally isolated (especially living in the Midwest) it was astounding to find community through the internet. Perhaps most importantly being a part of this community has given me lifelong friendships with individuals who share my joys and so many of my fears. Even though I still live far away from most of my Cheburashkas I feel supported and seen.  

KARAN

You’ve been writing for a while and have won a bunch of awards! What is some advice you’d like to offer young poets? Additionally, what is some of the best writing or writing-adjacent advice you’ve so far received, whether during your formal education or through your experiences as a writer? 

LUISA

Oh that’s a great question! One that I think has endless answers. For today, I’ll say that I’d recommend finding a reader that you trust. A few friends who will drag you out of the writing pit of despair when you inevitably find yourself in one. I am a writer who can go weeks without writing a single word and having trusted friends to say YES YOU WROTE A THING is life-sustaining for my work. This isn’t in any way a workshop, this is the writing equivalent of spending most of your time in sweatpants and then posting a hot picture of yourself where your friends immediately comment to affirm your hotness. 

Regarding the best writing advice I’ve ever received, I’d say that came from a mentor who emphasized the importance of reading. We are so lucky to have poetry. We should read as much of it as humanly possible. 

KARAN

Recently, we decided to ask our poets for a poetry prompt at the end. Would you provide a prompt for our readers, to help kickstart a poem?

LUISA

Sure! I really love fracturing abstractions with specificity. So to that end, take a phrase like “I’m as sad as __________” and write at least thirty lines where you riff on that idea. Once you clear the first ten versions of sadness something typically starts to fall off and you may find yourself sitting in the rain with the world's saddest poem. Or perhaps the beginning of thirty different poems.  

KARAN

We’d also love for you to recommend a piece of art (anything other than a poem) — perhaps a song, a film, or a visual artwork — that you find particularly inspiring or that you think everyone should experience, especially in the context of the themes you explore in your poetry. 

LUISA

I was listening to Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers’ sexual tension masterpiece “Islands in the Stream” in the car today and I gotta say there is no beautiful hair out of place in that song. When Rogers hit the “I set out to get you with a fine tooth comb” line I gasped at how good the image was. A really great piece of art will permanently transform something for you. I’m not sure I’ll be able to look at a comb the same way.  

KARAN

Finally, because we believe in studying the master's masters, we would love to know which poets have influenced you most throughout your career.

LUISA

I began to write my own poetry with a deep love for Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsveateva, when Tsevateva says “a kiss on the forehead– erases misery” I am completely undone every time she then in the next line “kisses your forehead.” There is an entire universe in this poem, I have fallen in love, I have been shattered, I have been saved. 

The first time I read Gerald Stern, I knew I had a place in the wilderness of American poetry. His poetry was funny, tremendously sad, and incredibly generous. Reading American Sonnets was life-changing for me. When I die, I will need someone to read his poetry at my funeral so that I can find my way home. 

Gerald, Marina, and Anna are the voices that shaped my early entry into the world of poetry. Still, I am continuously astounded by so many brilliant writers, especially those writing today. Claudia Rankine, Robin Coste Lewis, Victoria Chang, Aria Aber, Safiya Sinclair, Julia Kolchinsky, sam sax, Matthew Olzmann and Rick Barot are all poets I recently taught to my students whose work brings me tremendous joy. We are truly in a golden age of poetry.