An Interview with Kelli Russell Agodon

Kelli Russell Agodon is a fierce contemporary poet whose work is happily haunted by ghosts, both personal and poetic. Her work is hilarious, meditative, and vulnerable. A literary staple, she has written several poetry collections and craft books, she is co-founder and editor at Two Sylvias Press, she co-hosts the poetry series “Poems You Need,” and she serves as faculty in the MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writing Workshop (RWW). Kelli was my MFA thesis advisor at RWW last year, where I benefited from her keen poetic insight and sense of play.

‍ ‍– Liz Kingsley
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Liz Kingsley: I have many curiosities about your gorgeous new collection, Accidental Devotions. Your book is coming out around the same time as Driven to Write: 45 Writers on the Motives and Mysteries of their Craft, edited by Ellen Pinsky and Michael Slevin. Let me start by asking, what drives you to write?

Kelli Russell Agodon: I think what drives me to write is probably the same thing that drives many poets—curiosity, confusion, sadness, boredom, an inner ache to create, and maybe a slightly haunted feeling that the world is trying to tell us something.

I always remember what Marvin Bell said about the speaker—that the speaker isn’t you but someone who knows a lot about you. I think in Accidental Devotions the speaker contains multitudes. She is playful and hopeful and desireful and, well, all the “fuls.” She’s not as melancholy as the speaker in Dialogues with Rising Tides, but I don’t think darkness and anxiety will ever fully leave her. She’s just learned how to live with them a little better (well, sometimes).

I knew I wanted to stretch myself with this collection. David Bowie said, “If you feel safe in the area you’re working in, you’re not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you’re capable of being in. Go a little bit out of your depth. And when you don’t feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just about in the right place to do something exciting.” I believe that. For me, if I want to continue to grow as an artist or poet, I have to keep experimenting, playing, exploring who I am as a poet and human in the world. When we stop growing, I think we die (literally, figuratively, and metaphorically). I’ll pause here on that cheerful note.

LK: Can you say more about how you traveled out of your depth in this collection? Is it in terms of your subject matter, your speaker’s point of view, a sense of rawness, something else?

KRA: Sure, I think this book took me out to that Bowie place—“where your feet aren’t quite touching the bottom”—except I was probably clutching a pool noodle, as I do tend to run on the anxious side.

If you’ve read my earlier work, there has always been a Bi-vibe underneath, but in this book I wrote more into that space. I dove more directly into sexuality and desire, and new territory I hadn’t explored as openly before. And I’ve noticed something about myself: when I’m writing into material that makes me feel a little more exposed, I become almost obsessively attentive to craft, like my inner child is standing there with a #1 Student sticker on her shirt saying, “Okay, if we’re going to be vulnerable, we’re also going to be impeccable.” You may critique me for writing God as a queer woman or having sex on a gravestone or talking to Dickinson, but you will not come for my line breaks. Maybe I think “well-crafted” keeps me safe, maybe craft is my pool noodle?

LK: In the poem, “Accidental Devotions to Unseen Scars,” the speaker seems to offer a manifesto on how to persevere in the face of despair. Is this what writing poetry does for you?

KRA: Probably more than anything else. Though I should say poetry isn’t the only thing that helps in moments of despair—getting outside helps, talking with friends or a spontaneous martini night adds a little joy, writing a fan letter to another poet, calling my congressperson, watching a ridiculous but entertaining reality show, walking through my neighborhood at night to look at the stars—but poetry has always been the one constant thing in my life and helps me make sense of the world.

I think what poetry gives me is a place to hold complexity, a way to write it out. I’m not the best at explaining myself; my mind spiderwebs around when I talk—I could never be in the debate club, but it works for poetry. I’m able to sit with despair (or grief or confusion or anxiety) without needing to solve it. In fact, poems often give me the space to think. When I’m writing, I feel less alone with whatever I’m facing—poem as good friend, I guess. And ultimately, I hope my poems might offer that same companionship to a reader. That’s my wish if I were to have one.

LK: You mention Emily Dickinson and Rainer Maria Rilke throughout this book. What do these poets mean to you, and how do they inform your work?

KRA: To be very honest, I was surprised to see Emily Dickinson popping up in my poems since about twenty years ago she entered my work and fifteen years before that, I named my first cat “Emily.” Maybe she’s like cicadas or the Halle-Bopp comment to me—she circles back every X number of years.

Rilke surprised me—especially arriving by Ouija board! But it makes sense; both poets were what I was reading and have read. I mean, Rilke is just so quotable, and as poets and readers, what we read stays in our mind in some file folder. I might be writing and find that file folder spilling open with brilliance (not mine, but theirs), and maybe it sparks something I'm doing.

What's odd is now that this book has come into being, I see it as a love letter to poetry, to the reader. And both of these poets, Dickinson and Rilke, were writing their own letters—love letters even—in their own ways. It reminds me that all of our poems talk to other poets and poetry. We are not in a vacuum—we are small stars in constellations with each other and always to what came before us.

LK: The voice of your speaker is utterly charming, even whimsical, while exploring heavy material, which makes sobering subject matter truly entertaining. Do you consciously work to achieve that balance or is that how you naturally deal with difficult material?

KRA: Oh thank you for saying that, Liz! I think growing up in a Catholic family that used humor and laughter to deal with tough times and maybe (she says uncomfortably) even trauma—humor has been a defense mechanism for me. Life can harm me, hurt me, but if I can find a way to laugh at it, I feel like I’ve won a little bit. Poetry is like that too—if I can turn what hurt me or what I can’t control into art, I win. It feels like taking power over the harmful thing, if that makes sense.

But I don’t think I consciously work for that balance, I think it’s just my personality coming out on the page—it’s how my mind works. In my mind/world, you can’t have a beautiful day at the beach without the possibility of a drowning or tsunami, you can’t go on a hike without the worry of a tree falling on you or someone slipping down a ravine. Life is never just good and bad—it’s everything all at once, especially these days, and we find ways to cope—good and bad—we’re all kind of living it right now. But in my writing, humor and/or beauty (or the opposite of terror) have always been in my toolbox to deal with harder subjects.

LK:  I gather you see humor as a form of resistance. What are your thoughts about that?

KRA: Humor is absolutely a form of resistance. I wrote my graduate thesis on how contemporary women use humor in their work, and one thing that stayed with me is how humor operates as both risk and weapon. Barbara Kruger has one of my favorite quotes: “I think I developed language skills to deal with threat. It's the girl thing to do—you know, instead of pulling out a gun.” That feels exactly right to me—turning my rage into humor. As Gina Barreca says, I use humor as “a weapon against the absurdities of injustice.”

What humor can do—especially now—is open a door. It lets us say something sharp, even rebellious, without closing the listener off. It can sidestep the trap of sounding didactic and instead invites connection: you see this too, right?

I learned that early on. In my twenties, I worked a corporate job where a male coworker was constantly undermining me—little cuts, backhanded compliments about my salary, my clothes. One day in a meeting, I changed the dynamic with a single joke at his expense. The room erupted in laughter and he never bothered me again. Humor didn’t just deflect him—it reframed the power.

In poetry, humor can have a similar kind of voltage. It can destabilize authority, expose the absurd as well as explore what we’re taking in as “normal.” It’s a reminder that language can refuse obedience. And especially for women, for anyone whose voice has been minimized or managed, humor becomes a way to speak back—and sometimes with a smile that carries a sharp blade. (See poem about carrying a butterfly knife in a bra—ha!)

LK: The vulnerability in this collection is palpable and exquisite. The speaker addresses her sexuality, struggles with depression, mistreatment of others, and her mortality. Was it liberating to write these poems? Terrifying? How does it feel to release them into the world?

KRA: I don’t know that the verb was to write these poems—I guess because when I’m writing, it’s more like typing quickly into something that becomes a poem. It was fun and enjoyable to write them, but I never assume anyone will ever see them—and maybe that’s why it doesn’t feel liberating or terrifying. It just feels like me sitting on the couch, earbuds in, playing with language.

Now, the terror—that usually arrives right before the book comes out, when I think, What have I done? People could read these? (which is hilarious as that is the point of a published book!) But for me, so much of writing and creating a book is just me and my poems. Though at the very last minute with Accidental Devotions, I did email friends with subject lines like: RE: Am I going to humiliate myself with these poems? The good and bad thing about poetry is that not many people read it. Poets can be a bit under the radar. I’ve seen my book on a family member’s coffee table and am 100% sure they haven’t made it past the Table of Contents.

I think one of the best parts of growing older is the GNF (Give No Fucks) factor and being exactly who I am without apology. Especially these days—for women, for everyone—when it feels like the worst people are running things, if my biggest risk is being vulnerable in a poem… well, that’s a risk I can take. I recently heard someone say that embarrassment is one of the emotions people most avoid, and their advice was to move toward it—to see what it feels like. Maybe vulnerability is that for me. Growing up with Catholic shame, I’ve learned I feel safer being open, being honest with my experience—because maybe someone else will recognize themselves there and feel less alone.

LK: Returning to the charm of your speaker—when you write, do you have a particular audience in mind, perhaps someone who brings out your playfulness, or perhaps someone you miss?

KRA: Sometimes. Sometimes I’m writing directly to my friend Melissa Studdard, who brings out my mischief and playfulness, or to my dear dead friend Marty Silano, whom I miss deeply. Sometimes I’m writing to myself—which is probably a lot of the time—trying to say the thing I need to hear but haven’t quite admitted yet or maybe don’t even know or understand. And sometimes there’s just this mysterious “you,” a stand-in for whomever the poem needs.

When I’m writing a poem, I really don’t believe anyone will ever read it. Maybe that’s what gives me the freedom to just write–not overthink, not worry, not justify–it’s just me in my little cocoon with the page, with the poem, with language, with whatever ghost has wandered in, talking to me.

And I’m sure people I love are threaded through all my work, along with the dead poets, the ghosts—but I’m not sure I know who the “audience” is, and for me, it can be risky to try to write toward a crowd—I think my poems would close up if they felt watched. But yes, give me one person—real or imagined or even myself—and the door opens a little, maybe a lot.

LK: You literally wrote the book on ordering a manuscript: Demystifying the Manuscript: Essays and Interviews on Creating a Book of Poems. What were your guiding principles when organizing Accidental Devotions? What was your process?

KRA: My process is basically RuPaul on Drag Race: Good luck, and don’t fuck it up! I’m kidding—but also not.

I was about halfway through the manuscript when I realized I was doing the thing I always do: hiding the most vulnerable poems in the middle—like the reader had to earn them, like you don’t get the real stuff until you’ve made it X number of pages in. But the order wasn’t working. It was chaos. It was like—good poem, good poem, vulnerability, back to a bird, good poem, ghost, Emily Dickinson, Emily Dickinson, emotional devastation, joke. It felt like a vulnerable sandwich on white bread. No arc, no build, no real sense of invitation—a lot of stuff stuffed in the middle, a lot of stronger poems being hidden because I was feeling self-conscious.

So I stepped back and asked, What am I actually writing about when no one is looking or caring? And the answers were pretty clear—technology (our strange little glowing altars with which I have a love/hate relationship), desire (in all its messy, queer, devotional forms), rebellion (especially against what women are told to be or not be), and spirituality (this ongoing conversation with something larger, whether that’s God, ghosts, or the universe slipping notes under the door). These were my touchstones. So instead of reorganizing them by trust and story, I was letting my own insecurities about how I’d be perceived guide the ordering.

So those became the organizing principles—not rigid sections—more like a cabinet of curiosities or walking through a museum and seeing several exhibits, but understanding they are all connected. These poems talk to each other across the book—a poem about a text message may echo a prayer; a poem about a lover might sit beside a ghost (or on gravestone or in a museum); a friend may die, but an iPhone might buzz during the memorial. It’s all connected.

And then, of course, running underneath everything is grief, aging, complicated love, the body changing, the world changing. All the things I try to outrun but end up writing toward anyway.

I think once I stopped hiding the vulnerable poems and let them stand in the doorway—right up front, saying, this is the book—everything shifted. The book began to trust the reader. There’s a real scariness in that, in trusting the reader will “get you,” that what you’ve made will be held with care, especially when you’ve put your whole heart into it, which I did. But in the end, the manuscript stopped trying to hide and started telling the truth, or the Truth with a capital T.

LK: You include a few inventive examples of ars poetica: “Prompts” and “We Are the Only Poets, and Everyone Else Is Prose,” as well as various other forms throughout Accidental Devotions, including couplets, tercets, sonnets, and prose poems. How do you decide on form? Does each poem dictate its form? Is a variety of forms important to you?

KRA: Form became important to me because the book itself started to split into two energies: the “Devotions” and the “Accidental Devotions.” And I had to ask—what makes something a devotion? And what makes something accidental?

The “Devotion” poems tend to be more intentional, more prayer-like with 5-line stanzas and the lines 3-5 of that stanza are indented while “Accidental Devotions” speak to things we may accidentally find ourselves focusing on such as cellphones or realizations or hopes such as the universe is on your side or the power of women. These poems are 4-line stanzas with lines 3 and 4 indented.

One of the best pieces of advice I was given as a young poet was that your form should mirror your content. For example, if you have a poem about the sea, maybe your poem has staggered lines so it looks like waves. Form is the last thing I revise in a poem, the poem has to “earn” its form. But each poem gets its own form based on what it’s offering in content and voice and tone—and again, I don’t think I fully know its form until I’m deep into revision. I guess it’s kind of like choosing an outfit depending on where you’re going and how you’re feeling, if that makes sense.

LK: You have a knack for creating memorable poem titles. Can you speak to the importance of a poem’s title?

KRA: This may sound a little backward, but I think the reason I’m good at titles is because I’m actually bad at them. My own titles do not come easily. I shadowbox them daily. Meanwhile, friends send me their poems saying, “Help!” and I’ll toss out a title and they’re like, That’s it! I’m apparently very good at naming other people’s poems—just not my own.

So maybe the reason I appear “good” at titles is because I work really, really hard at them. I have a gut reaction for when a title clicks—but getting there can be a bear.

Sometimes I give myself constraints just to get unstuck: the title has to start with an “R,” or it has to be six words long, or it has to include an object from the poem, but not an obvious one. Anything to trick my brain into solving the problem sideways.

I do think titles matter. They’re the first handshake to the reader. They can ground a reader or give the reader info to make the poem stronger. But I’m also a little judgy and a little hypocritical about it—I’ll say, “Don’t just call a poem ‘Switchback’—there has to be something better,” and then, not long ago, I titled a poem…“Switchback.” So clearly, there are moods to my madness.

I guess like everything I go through phases. I love a good talky-title and Accidental Devotions is probably from my talky-era! But right now, I’m playing with one-word titles. It’s like the year I wore crazy colorful cardigans and then suddenly everything in my closet went black and minimalist. I’m still the same person, the poem is still the same poem—it’s just wearing a different coat.

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Accidental Devotions is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press May 2026.