April 28, 2025

Daisy Fried is the author of five books of poetry: My Destination (forthcoming from Flood Editions and Carcanet Press); The Year the City Emptied; Women’s Poetry: Poems and Advice; My Brother is Getting Arrested Again; and She Didn’t Mean to Do It. She is a poetry critic for The New York Times and the Poetry Foundation, as well as a faculty member in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. A resident of Philadelphia, Fried has also been the recipient of Guggenheim, Hodder and Pew Fellowships.

Fried will join the Drexel Writing Festival on Tuesday, May 6 from 12:30–1:50 p.m. in the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies (MacAlister Hall, Room 5051C) for a poetry reading and discussion. Learn more about the Drexel Writing Festival and view a full list of festival events here.

Read more about Fried in the Q&A below.

How do your roles as a poet and poetry critic influence each other?

Writing about poetry makes me pay closer attention to what I read; makes me think about the hundreds and thousands of small and large choices poets make in the process of drafting and revising poems; and helps me evaluate what choices I want to make in my own poems, and how I want my poems to be in the world, in conversation with other poems and with their readers.

Being a critic also raises my visibility, which means, maybe, that my poems get read a little more than they would if I weren’t writing reviews. Being read is not a given in the crowded and also somewhat obscure world of poetry; it’s hard to write in what sometimes feels like a vacuum, so writing criticism helps me feel as if I’m in the conversation, contributing to it. That’s good for encouraging me to write more poems.

What’s a piece of advice you often give to emerging poets?

Read widely. Read poets of the past and of other countries, not just the latest thing (but read the latest thing too). Read people who are not like you, and who challenge your taste and ideas. Actively work against narrowness while also figuring out what you, with your temperament, desires, ethics and enthusiasms, need to be doing. Expect all that to change over your years as a working poet—but don't change simply to conform to a period style. Idiosyncrasy is delicious! Also: write badly. I mean it. If we had to write well all the time, who would write anything at all? If you write badly, you’ll get something down that you can work with. Trust uncertainty, trust confusion. Try to stay in confusion for as long as you can stand—that’s where the discovery happens.

How important is a book’s title to shaping a reader’s expectations, and how do you choose yours?

A good title attracts attention and gives some idea of what’s inside, thematically and tonally. For more on this, I’m just going to quote my editor, the poet Devin Johnston, on why he thought the title of my next book (due out in 2026) works well. He said it has "a succinct, durable charisma" that "doesn’t run interference with the poems contained, which sit pretty easily and variously under its banner." This will be my rubric for titles going forward!

What advice do you have for poets looking to secure funding or fellowships for their work?

Write and apply, write more and apply more. The only way not to be worthy of a prize (whether or not you get it) is not to write and grow. The only way to be sure you won’t get an award is to fail to apply. Don’t ever hide who you are or try to second guess what the judges and juries want; perhaps do try to present yourself as a character with specific interests and urgencies. I guess what I’m saying is be honest about yourself, but as the best version of that honest self--which will help the judges imagine the whole poet along with the poems.

How has Philadelphia’s culture, energy and history influenced your poetry?

Philadelphia and/or Philadelphians are lively, grubby, verbally surprising, visually textured, down-to-earth, obnoxious, generous, serious and very funny. It’s a city with layers, history, stories and diversity. I don’t think all poems should be written in what the poet Francis Ponge called le ronron poetique, or the poetic purr. They should be written in all the tones available to us: joy, surprise, praise, meditation and mourning, yes, but also anger, grievance, hilarity, petulance and melancholy. Poems can be coarse, casual, formal, informal, witty, dry, hot, cool, sarcastic, aggressive and seductive. They should be all those things because, I believe, people are all those things. All those tones and feelings are very much on display in Philly. So that helps me to get all those tones and images into my poems. That said, I'm moving to San Francisco later this year. Will my poetry change?

Who are some poets you admire, and what do you think makes their work stand out?

Too many to count! But I’ll mention that right now I've been reading a lot of Zbigniew Herbert, a 20th Century Polish poet who lived and wrote through times of repression, censorship and a lack of basic freedoms. Reading Herbert is teaching me possibilities for surviving poetically under such conditions.

How do you handle writer’s block or moments when inspiration feels distant?

To be a writer all you have to do is write. Most of the time I write (notes, bits and pieces of verse, sentences, paragraphs, sometimes complete drafts) without achieving completion for what I'm working on. All this is necessary to keep the poetry muscle strong and supple. Inspiration happens seldom and usually arises from work—whether the work of physically writing or the work of paying attention. Every now and then, everything will start really to click, and I'll know exactly what to do, exactly what a draft needs. That feels amazing, when all the confusing labor coalesces into something finished. But that won’t happen unless I do all the inconclusive writing. It’s a little like pianists playing scales and practicing compositions: if they didn't do that, their hands and minds wouldn't be able to perform well at concert time.

If you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would it be?

I guess I’d say don’t be so shy. Proceed with curiosity, not self-protection. Be sociable, not in the hyper-transactional way you sometimes see in some poets’ (of all ages) hustle, but to make more genuine friends in the art. However, over the years I have more or less learned—and continue to learn—this lesson, so maybe I don’t need to lecture my young self about it, and can give the poor thing a break?