Making Art More Human
Poet Kelli Russell Agodon on form, vulnerability, quiet rebels and humor
“Right now we’re in a world where I don’t know if I’m watching a video that’s real or not. But I know humanness is real. And I need more of that in my life. And I think other people do too.”—Kelli Russell Agodon
Preview: Emerging Form Episode 166 with Kelli Russell Agodon
Her most recent book, Accidental Devotions, blends humor, vulnerability, aging, the chaos of relationships, and the art of humaning. In this week’s episode (out Thursday), we talk with Kelli about the importance of vulnerability in art and how she makes a “vulnerability sandwich” in a book, how finding the form is the last part of her creative process and why it’s important that it mirrors the content, the role of obsession in art, and why play is so important to creative process. We also ask Kelli to read one of her poems that touches on the tension between technology and our humanness … and what this means to artists.
Kelli Russell Agodon’s most recent book is Accidental Devotions (Copper Canyon Press, 2026). She is the author of five poetry collections. Her work has received numerous honors, including the Dorothy Rosenberg Poetry Prize, a Poetry Society of America Prize, the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award in Poetry, and three Washington State Book Award finalist selections. She is the cofounder of Two Sylvias Press, teaches in Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writing Workshop MFA program, and cohosts the poetry series Poems You Need with Melissa Studdard. She lives in a sleepy seaside town in Washington State.
What We’re Reading and Listening to:
Rosemerry:
One of my favorite poems of all time is Stanley Kunitz’s “The Layers.” I recently re-read it with a group of people and it opened such rich conversation about aging, loss, the many lives we live, letting go, and how to show up. It’s one of those poems in which almost every line is my favorite.
At the Telluride Mountain Film festival, I had a chance to see a new film called “Your Attention, Please,” a film about reclaiming our humanity in the digital age, and just how much is at stake with our mental healthy. It’s still on the festival circuit, but it plans to release sometime this summer. One of my biggest takeaways was the difference between living our lives performatively in an attempt to impress others versus living for the moment, and just how empty we can feel when our sense of self is based on “likes.” It focuses also on cyber bullying and ways we might create a more healthy relationship with our own responses to others on social media. And the biggest take away of all—just how unregulated the social media realm is, and how dangerous.
Christie:
I spent the holiday weekend in Crested Butte at the Mountain Words Festival catching up with lots of great writers and former Emerging Form guests, like Shelley Read. One of my favorite events was a conversation with Megan Kate-Nelson about her new book, Westerners: Mythmaking and Belonging on the American Frontier. Nelson writes about the history of the West through characters not often included in the Manifest Destiny-tinged frontier mythologies. Ryan Warner of Colorado Public Radio was the interviewer and the conversation will air on CPR sometime soon.
Because You Said I Put the Holy in Melancholy
In the cathedral of my body,
I lit a candle deep within the chamber
of my heart. When my lungs glowed
like paper lanterns, I worried they’d
illuminate the sorrow I’d buried. In melancholy
I find the words—my lone ache, heal only me.
I lit a votive on the altar of the ordinary,
dripped wax and hoped for meaning. We are
messy saints—drawn to light, yet fluent in dusk.
Come with me to the confessional where we can kiss
our scars and dip our burns in holy water.
I believed depression was a cape
of feathers, but when I tried to fly, I felt hummingbirds
ablaze in my rib cage, trying their best to sing.
And those wafers in my pocket? I stole
what I needed to nourish the night,
the nightingales of me—let me understand melancholy
is a hunger I can’t feed. Let me trust the birds will live.
—Kelli Russell Agodon, from Accidental Devotions (Copper Canyon Press, 2026)
A Note About Paid Subscriptions:
First, we want to thank ALL our subscribers! We are so grateful you join us in this conversation about what it is to engage with yourself, the world and others in a creative way. And a BIG thank you to our paid subscribers. You make this podcast possible. Only our paid subscribers receive our bonus episodes as a thank you for their financial support. This week, we talk about the surprise gift at the end of Kelli’s book and how her editor helped her see what she hadn’t known was possible, how to write a title that really serves a poem, the art of constraint, plus we ask Kelli to read us a poem that unsettles her, and she shares a whole poem of writing prompts.
Two Questions:
(share your answers with us here on Substack or in our FB group)
What is something that drives you crazy about your genre/the other writers or artists in your genre?
What is the role of ambition in a creative practice?
Ironic how awkward the AI reader makes this episode sound.