In 2026, the Academy of American Poets invited twelve poets to each curate a month of poems. In this short Q&A, Denise Low discusses her curatorial approach and her own creative work.
Poets.org: Welcome to the Guest Editor Q&A hosted by the Academy of American Poets. I’m Mary Sutton, editorial director at the Academy, and I’m here today with the Guest Editor for November, Denise Low. Denise is the author most recently of House of Grace, House of Blood, and is the former poet laureate of Kansas. Denise, thank you so much for joining me today.
Denise Low: Absolutely. And thank you for the work you do with this program.
Poets.org: Let’s jump right in. How did you approach curating Poem-a-Day for November?
Low: Well, first of all, I wanted poems that moved me, and that’s my first ... poems that I connect with; and the persona that’s behind the writer of the poem is something I’m very conscious of when I read poetry. So that was number one.
Secondly, I wanted new poets who had not been featured on Poem-a-Day, or at least not in the last five years, and I think I did that successfully. I was looking for people who offer a lot to their communities who might be overlooked because they’re doing so much for others all the time, like publishers and organization administrators, people who help keep the world of poetry glued together. And then a final thing that occurred while I was in the process of curating was the Twin Cities political organization to support immigrant families. And I really did try to highlight as many people from the Twin Cities as I could.
Poets.org: Minneapolis is a culturally vibrant city, though perhaps lesser known for this than some other major cities, and even arguably overshadowed a bit by Chicago. We have had some other Guest Editors who’ve really highlighted the poetry scene in Minneapolis. Danez Smith, who curated Poem-a-Day in August 2024, comes to mind. What do you think sets Minneapolis apart as a poetry community, and what do you wish people outside of the region knew about it?
Low: You know, I am from Lawrence, Kansas, and the Midwest, so I think of it as an extension. (They’re not going to like this.) The upper Midwest is an extension for me of the good Kansas where people care about each other, community, they support community events, they’re well organized.
My favorite story about Minnesotans is that when the ice begins to thaw in the gutters in the street, neighborhood people take turns chipping the ice away from the water drains so that the thawing snow can drain properly and not flood the streets. That’s just a neighborhood patrol thing that’s done individually. So that helpfulness and coordination is something that I see in how people mentor each other, the excellence of The Loft, and the writing programs in the colleges. I’ve been to events with musicians coordinated with poets, and the activism, the great number of events to support the political climate right now.
And for me also, Minneapolis is a site of Birchbark Books. And as a person with some heritage of Lenape Munsee culture, it’s wonderful to be led by that organization which has a deep website and a deep commitment to readings, events, and making Native books available.
Poets.org: If you could direct our audience to one poem or more than one poem on Poets.org that you haven’t curated, what would it be and why?
Low: [laughs] Okay. A mother has no favorites.
Poets.org: [laughs] That’s a good thing.
Low: And so I really hesitate to do that. But since my mind is on the Minneapolis experience right now, I am thinking of Kate Kysar’s “Salt and Sand” poem that really details and drills down into the details of the feelings and the community in response to ICE.
Poets.org: Who are you reading right now?
Low: Oh gosh, there’s so many wonderful books out. Kimberly Blaeser has a book of short stories, Red Ants, out that I’m dying to get a copy of. I’m reading Jake Skeets’s Horses, and he and another poet I read is Dean Rader. And both those poets I read to learn how to write because they expand the possibilities of poetry so much and of language so much that I just feel invigorated and excited about poetry all over again when I read their work.
Poets.org: And what are you working on now in your writing, teaching, and publishing life?
Low: Oh, gosh. You know, I’ve got Mercury and Gemini, so even though I’m a stolid Taurus, my mind is jumping all sorts of directions at once. I just am completing a manuscript based on the experience of losing my husband of thirty years, and I think I’m going to call it “Slow Walk.” And the “Petrichor” is from that manuscript and the other poems on the website mostly. And it’s been an exercise in lyricism wrapped around observation of community and natural events. There’s a poem called “Widow’s Fire,” which I was thinking about using as a title, but that takes one in a whole different direction.
And then the second thing I’m working on is an extension of the research I did for House of Grace, House of Blood, which evolved into finding petroglyphs in the area where my family lived in New Jersey. And because I have a background in Plains Indian art and a publication from the University of Nebraska Press of Northern Cheyenne ledger art from the Fort Robinson breakout, I’m able to understand those petroglyphs a little bit more, and I really see them as an Indigenous form of literacy. It’s not alphabetic. And it has inspired me to unpack those individual petroglyphs. I have a long poem, “Dog,” coming out in an anthology from Wesleyan University Press. And then there’s also constellations, the Pleiades. There’s all sorts of knowledge etched and chipped into the rock that I just feel amazing spirituality flowing from it. So I’m attempting to write about those Lenape petroglyphs from the region where my family lived.
Poets.org: Just out of curiosity, where in New Jersey did your family live?
Low: Schooley’s Mountain. And there’s another mountain that I can’t pronounce the name and remember it correctly, but it’s also connected in that same mountain range. There was a band of Schooley’s Mountain, and that place that were finely “diasporaed,” if that’s a verb, in the 1870s when my family members moved out to Kansas.
Poets.org: Very interesting. I’m a New Jerseyan, and I wasn’t aware of this [laughs].
Low: But you know what’s amazing, a lot of this research is being done by local people who say, oh yeah, remember over there, this particular waterfall? Local people are identifying structures, fences. There’s a snake effigy made of stone, and these stone walls that everybody thought were colonial sheep pens have been dated now. The archaeologists have come in and they are dating them and finding all sorts of sedimentary and artifacts, evidence, to support dates of one to three thousand years ago at least.
Poets.org: That’s heartening, and it’s especially powerful that people within the community are taking it upon themselves to recover what could otherwise become lost history.
Low: Exactly, exactly. And I’m trying to do my best to, with my limited background and abilities, I really want to get this story into public awareness. And I’ve also been researching the slavery of Delaware or Lenape Munsee and other Algonquian nation people who were sent to the Caribbean. And that is the story of the genocide and the enslavement in the Northeast through the 1500s, 1600s. And then it’s sort of like, oh, well, they all got measles and died. And that’s a real erasure of what really happened. And what’s really also exciting, an Eastern Pequot woman told me how the Bermuda people, in particular Saint [David’s] Island, I believe, are reconnecting with the Northeast Algonquian Pequots and sharing dances and stories back and forth. So those communities are reconnecting.
Poets.org: That’s fantastic to hear. Thank you so much, Denise, for this interview and for your time.