Annie Diamond is an Ashkenazi Jewish poet and recovering academic who has made her home in Chicago. Her poems appear and are forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, No Tokens Journal, Western Humanities Review, and widely elsewhere. She is currently trying to place her first poetry manuscript.
You can read Speak over it as magic in the October 2025 issue.
Would you like to tell us a little bit more about your poem? For instance, how or why you wrote it, or perhaps provide some extra context?
A few years ago I started composing poems in a kind of collage/Frankenstein’s monster style, pulling lines from old notebooks and putting them together. This method has felt very productive for me because it allows me to see resonances between different things that have drawn my attention at different times, in different contexts. “As above, so below” is a phrase that has lived with me for almost ten years, something I encountered in 2016 in the most magical place I have ever had the privilege of spending time (MacDowell in Peterborough, New Hampshire). The phrase “Speak over it as magic” is something I wrote in a notebook a few years ago, during a lecture by an Egyptologist about the Book of the Dead. For me these phrases resonate together because they both hold some notion of spirituality and mystery and magic.
Is there a collection of poetry that never leaves your (perhaps metaphorical) nightstand?
‘A Year & Other Poems’ by Jos Charles. The formal structures Jos uses in these poems have helped me think about my own poems so much, and the different formal spaces they demand on the page and in my body.
If you didn’t write poetry, how do you think you might access the same fulfillments that poetry offers in your life?
I have written poetry absolutely as long as I can remember, at least since age twelve, so it’s hard to imagine a version of me that does not do it. I also love to cook, and something about cooking feels like writing poetry to me; in both, I am bringing together disparate ingredients to create a beautiful, sensible, meaningful whole. If I did not write poetry, maybe I would be a professional chef.
How do you revise your work?
A writing teacher told me many years ago that putting poems in a drawer (literally or metaphorically) for six months or a year, or as long as you can stand to, before you look at them to try and revise is often the most productive way to do it. I either try to do this or I revise as I write. I’m historically bad at revising full drafts. I also started a local in-person poetry workshop over the summer that meets in my apartment, and I have started bringing older poems to this workshop; fresh eyes definitely help me think about revisions when it comes to old work.
As a poet, what does creative success or achievement look like for you?
At this point, belonging to a community of writers and artists is increasingly important to me, and feels like the most important marker of a successful creative life. But also, writing constantly and always envisioning that my best work is ahead of me. It’s like the old cliché about sharks dying if they swim backward; creative success to me means always moving forward.
We love the artistic underdogs, the experimentalists, the lovely weirdos — who or what might you get creative joy or energy from that others might not be aware of yet?
I think my sources of joy and energy are pretty well-catalogued on the internet (I love Instagram), but here are a few: watching sunrises at Lake Michigan; The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron; drinking coffee and eating a fancy pastry alone at a café; crispy, sunny autumnal weather; overdressing for every occasion (in terms of fanciness, not warm layers).
How or where or with what does a poem begin?
For me, usually, with a phrase I have written in a journal weeks or months or years ago. This is often but not always an image.
Are there other art forms that inspire or inform your poetry?
Cooking, pop music of the 2010s, pop music of the 1960s and 1970s (my parents played a lot of Joni Mitchell and Simon & Garfunkel when I was a kid), long-form nonfiction.
How do you make space for poetry in your daily routine?
I am historically bad at this too. But I am lucky to have a day job where I work from home twice a week, so I often try to get writing done on my work-from-home days when things are slow. I am finding that, as I get older, I am happier to use smaller chunks of time for my writing (this is presumably related to the internet destroying my attention span, but I am trying to make the best of that). Dinner simmering on the stove for twenty minutes: excellent writing time. I get home from doing errands on Saturday and have half an hour before I go meet some friends: excellent writing time. I wake up ten minutes earlier than my alarm before I have to go to the office: happens rarely, but also excellent writing time!
What are you reading or watching or listening to lately that intrigues or inspires you?
I recently read a stack of Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize winners published by Persea Books; Mortal Geography by Alexandra Teague (2009) and Border Vista by Anni Liu (2021) were two I especially loved, and The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded by Molly McCully Brown (2016) is one of my all-time favorite volumes of poetry; I am due for a reread of that one. I have been listening to and watching a lot of A Bit Fruity, Matt Bernstein’s podcast about American leftist political and cultural issues; it’s phenomenal and pretty much my favorite piece of media out there right now. I am always watching a lot of Jeopardy.
Do you have a trusted first reader and how did they win the honour?
Usually my husband or my mom. My husband mostly because he is my roommate, and therefore is usually around when I am writing, and I can shout to him, “Come read this!” My mom has always been incredibly supportive of and interested in my writing, so I love to send her first drafts.
Do you write by routine or do you wait for the poetry to visit you?
Something in between. At this moment of my life I am trying to focus on play rather than discipline; I do not have a firm writing routine. But the whole idea of waiting to be moved to write has never made any sense to me; what I am moved to do is play Stardew Valley and eat snacks and take naps and rewatch television episodes I have seen twenty times. Writing is always a conscious choice.
In terms of poetic style or craft, is there a big question you are trying to find an answer for?
What does it mean to belong: to/in a place, to/in a relationship, to/in a family, to/in a religion, to/in political ideologies, to/in language, to/in yourself. What does belonging look like? And I know this is a question with many different answers. Writing helps me answer it for myself.