In Retrospect: An Interview with Grant Chemidlin, author of In the Middle of a Better World
This month’s “In Retrospect” interview is with Grant Chemidlin, whose first collection was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. In this series, we ask renowned poets to look back over their poems and collections, mapping out their poetic processes. We sought to hear about core poems and fascinations which have shaped Chemidlin’s body of work, from his early writing to his most recent compositions. His 2026 collection, In the Middle of a Better World, “carries us from the fearful, lonely dark of the closet out into the bright, brilliant clarity of the self understood,” in the words of Jaswinder Bolina. Here, Chemidlin walks us through his life in poetry thus far, from an early poem exploring darkness and light, to recent poetry written post-wedding.
Frontier Poetry: What was the first poem, published or unpublished, that you remember writing? What aspect of it do you look back at and appreciate the most?
Grant Chemidlin: The first poem I ever wrote opens with the line: “Give up. You’ve lost, the darkness cries, flicking his tongue, and spewing his lies” and ends with an image of a door made of light. I
wrote the poem at a time when I was feeling incredibly lost and depressed, but after writing it,
felt myself become, at least for a moment, a little lighter. It was the beginning of my
understanding of what a poem can do. It can’t necessarily lead us from uncertainty to certainty,
but it can bring joy, catharsis, hope.
I look back on this poem, on this period of writing, and see such pure intentions. I was really
writing for me and for me only. I wasn’t trying to get published or build an audience. I was
looking inside myself, following language and sound and instinct. Of course, I still do all these
things, or try to, but it’s harder when it’s now suddenly a “career.” There’s added pressure and
goals and a lot more noise to parse through.
FP: If there is a poem you could identify as either the launch point, catalyst, or axle your first
collection What We Lost in the Swamp spins around, which poem would that be? What did
the process of writing that poem entail?
GC: The titular poem was the first poem I wrote for the book and the seed from which the rest of the
poems grew. It was unlike any of the poems I’d written before, which were shorter, more
general, driven by metaphor rather than autobiographical fact. “What We Lost in the Swamp”
turned out deeply specific, more imagistic, more steeped in memory and trying to understand my
past. It was also the gayest poem I’d written up until that point. It’s about a boy (me)
experimenting with another boy in the middle of the woods, which was, for a decade and a half,
my deepest, darkest secret.
The process of writing this poem was a process of letting go, finally releasing what I had been
holding in a death grip all those years. As writers, especially when we are unsure what to write
next, we should always try asking ourselves: What do I fear? What am I afraid to say? Why?
FP: What lesson(s) did writing and publishing What We Lost in the Swamp teach you which you applied to your most recent collection?
GC: I think What We Lost in the Swamp marks the beginning of me fully embracing my identity in
my life and in my art. I learned the value of writing honestly and without fear; how when I did
that, I produced my best, most resonant poems. Poems that I loved, of course, but also, poems
that readers loved too. The more specific I got about my life, somehow, the more readers saw
themselves in the work.
I say “beginning,” because even in What We Lost in the Swamp, I reread it and feel myself still
holding back a bit, still unwilling to look my shame square in the face. My new book, In the
Middle of a Better World, is another step in the right direction toward honesty and truth. It’s
gayer, braver, more unabashed. It’s a direct examination of society and my own internalized
homophobia, which, funnily enough, led me to write more openly about sex and love.
I couldn’t have written In the Middle of a Better World without first writing What We Lost in the
Swamp. Writing, I realize now, is about building blocks. The poem we write is an amalgamation
of every poem we’ve written before it. We have to keep writing to keep growing. We have to
write the poem about shame before we can truly write the poem about joy.
FP: In terms of the evolution of your second collection, In the Middle of a Better World, could
you briefly map out the stages your manuscript went through, from a starting point to the
final draft?
GA: In the Middle of a Better World was written and rewritten over the course of 4 years. What I
practiced with this book, unlike my first book, was patience. It had two other titles, was at one
point 90 pages and at another point 52 pages. I let it evolve. I trusted the process. Every single
time I thought I was “finished” with it, I’d put it away for a few months, then come back to it
with fresh eyes, and new poems! Future me always proved to be a wiser, better poet.
For example, I had the very first draft done a few weeks before my wedding. I was very happy
with it, until I realized I was writing a gay love poetry book and hadn’t even experienced my
own wedding yet! There was more life I needed to live, more poems I needed to write in order to
really flesh out the book. The poems I ended up writing after my wedding are some of my
favorites and definitely highlights of the collection.
How did I know when it was “done”? I didn’t, not really. I picked the manuscript back up after a
6-month break. The last revisions I had done were brutal. I cut a lot of poems, the whole first
section. I wanted it to feel “sophisticated” and “poetic” but what I was reading now only felt
sterile, too short, too bare-bones, suddenly lacking the magic. I added back the poems I missed,
added in a whole batch of new poems, and then—something clicked. I can’t quite explain it, but
deep down I knew I felt satisfied with it. I had put in the time and the effort. Trusting my gut felt
earned and not some impatient, spur-of-the-moment decision. At the end of the day, I think the
question we should be asking ourselves as writers isn’t Is this book ready? but really, Does this
book, in its current form, excite me?
FP: What running themes or fascinations do you identify throughout your poetry, from your earliest poems to your most recent ones?
GC: I find myself always making connections between queerness and nature: setting queerness in
nature, or using nature as a way to depict queerness as natural. Queer people have always relied
on nature as a place of solace—venturing into the woods, away from society, where we feel safe
enough to be ourselves, without judgement. For me, queerness and nature share a lot of the same
adjectives: mysterious and magical, dangerous, strange, ever-growing, beautiful, multi-faceted,
unique.
Funnily enough though, my most recent poems seem to be departing from nature, or relying less
on nature as a setting. I think as I grow more and more comfortable in my life as an openly gay
man, that everyday concrete life is reflected more and more in my work. My city, my job, my
apartment, being stuck in traffic, politics and daily news, all these things that ground me in the
world. I guess this could mean I don’t need the woods quite as much as I used to. I’ve found (or
carved out) other places of solace within society itself.
FP: Finally, as you are writing currently (or simply thinking, which is where writing often starts), what is something—an idea, social issue, piece of art, song, etc.—that you are obsessed with?
GC: AI keeps making its way into my newer poems (the idea, not AI language). It’s becoming more
and more embedded into our daily lives, whether we want it or not. I’m fascinated, but mostly,
terrified of what it means for progress, the work force, the future of art and children’s learning.
Who will be our next great writers if kids are letting ChatGPT write all their essays for them?
What happens to writing when you remove the human component? I’ll admit I recently asked
ChatGPT to “Write a poem in the style of Grant Chemidlin” and if I’m being totally honest, it
wasn’t half bad. I don’t know what that means, for me, or for writing. I do know, however, that
where there are questions being raised, where there are dire conversations needing to be had,
there is fertile ground for poetry (the human kind).
