Interview: Maurya Simon

Maurya Simon’s The Blue Bridge, her twelfth volume of poems, will appear in 2026 (Etruscan Press). Her earlier volume, The Wilderness: New and Selected Poems, received the 2019 Independent Booksellers Association’s Gold Medal in Poetry. Simon’s opera libretto, “Tamar,” with choral music by French American composer, Eliane Aberdam, premiered at the University of Rhode Island. A Fulbright Senior Research Fellow (South India), NEA Poetry Fellow, and a Poetry Society’s Lucille Medwick Memorial and Cecil Hemley Memorial Awardee, Simon’s served residencies at the American Academy in Rome, Baltic Centre for Writers & Translators, Hawthornden Castle, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, and the MacDowell Colony. Simon’s poetry has been translated into Hebrew, French, Spanish, Rumanian, Bengali, Greek, and Farsi. She serves as a Professor Emerita at the University of California, Riverside.

SS: What is the function of poetry?

MS: I wholeheartedly agree with several wise comments about poetry that you’ve made in your craft talks this past year, Sean: “Poetry is about giving and it begins by listening,” and that it’s “one of the last refuges for reality.” You’ve also said that it involves “a devotion to authenticity.” I would add, in answer to your first question, “What is the function of poetry,” that it embraces a multitude of meanings, purposes, and benefits: It can clarify the world, especially when it’s obscured by dishonesty and pain; it can startle us back into ourselves with its truth, honesty, and courage; it can teach us new ways to see and feel, while avoiding sentimentality; it can give voice to the voiceless (and to the voice of the Other); it can imbue our lives with a sense of the sacred; it can open us up to the mysterious vitality of dreams; and it can light a lantern that casts a light on consciousness. Oh, there are so many other possible “functions” of poetry, including inducing bewilderment in us, so we must find our own way through the wilderness of our lives; wooing a lover; grieving for a dead relative; exclaiming a “barbaric yawp;” celebrating a marriage; decrying injustice, and so on. And let’s not forget that poetry can make our minds and hearts quietly sing.

SS: What is the hardest thing about writing poetry?

MS: Perhaps the hardest aspect of writing poetry is believing in the primacy of self. Each poet, first and foremost, must own the validity and significance of his or her voice. This doesn’t mean that she needs to have a stable and hardy ego, nor that she’s full of her own puffery regarding the uniqueness of her thoughts and experiences. Instead, it means that she’s willing to explore what it means to be captive in her own body, to live within her moment in history, and to hover inside her mind, even when it’s crazed or ugly or impenetrable.

SS: What would make poetry better or healthier?

MS: I’d believe there’s a three-pronged effort necessary that might result in making poetry stronger, more robust, and more present in our lives: first, teaching it in every grade of school, from kindergarten through graduate school (including in medical, engineering, business, military, and public policy schools); secondly, making sure that creative writing students read a broad range of poets’ work, from antiquity to our contemporary era, and including an international array of poems and poets, and that students learn prosody and formal poetics as useful tools (which they may later abandon or reject). Finally, wouldn’t it be wonderful if every American city set aside funds to hire a local poet laureate whose main function is to happily engage their citizens and communities with reading and writing poetry?

SS: What non-poetry book should poets read?

MS: It’s impossible to recommend reading just one non-poetry book, but I do think it’s important to read books that pique, or rhyme with, your own interests. For instance, I’m fascinated by insects and archeology, so I delves into books on these subjects. Perhaps a cookbook, or a book of psalms, will be inspiring and open new horizons for you. BUT, if I’m on stranded a desert island and can only magically bring a single book with me, it would be the Oxford English Dictionary.

SS: Which poet do you think is underrated?

MS: In my mind, Bert Meyers is one of the most undervalued poets in our country. He was a brilliant poet and teacher at Pitzer College with whom I studied, and he died in 1979 from lung cancer. His poems are so crystalline, deeply felt, metaphorically dynamic, wise, and timeless that he seems to rival Emily Dickinson in his depth and importance.

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For further reading:

Simon, Maurya. The Wilderness: New & Selected Poems, 1980-2016. Pasadena, CA: Red Hen Press, 2018. [Buy at Bookshop]

—. The Blue Bridge. Wilkes-Barre, PA: Etruscan Press, 2026. [Buy at Bookshop]

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