Interview with Kimiko Hahn, Judge of the 2026 Nature Poetry Prize
Kimiko Hahn is the author of eleven collections of poetry, including The Ghost Forest: New & Selected Poems (W.W. Norton, 2024) which plays with given forms while creating new ones, and, in doing so, honors past writers. Previous books Foreign Bodies, Toxic Flora, and Brain Fever were prompted by fields of science; The Narrow Road to the Interior takes title and forms from Bashō’s famous journals. Reflecting her interest in Japanese poetics, her essay on the zuihitsu was published in the American Poetry Review.
In 2023, Kimiko was named a Chancellor for the Academy of American Poets and received The Poetry Foundation’s Ruth Lilly Lifetime Achievement Award. Additional honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, PEN/Voelcker Award, Shelley Memorial Prize, Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize, American Book Award, and NEA Fellowships. In her service to the field, she enjoys promoting chapbooks and has created a chapbook archive at the Queens College Library. She will serve as New York State Poet from 2025-2027. Hahn is a distinguished professor in the MFA Program in Creative Writing & Literary Translation at Queens College, The City University of New York.
Interview with Kimiko Hahn
by Grant Chemidlin
Grant Chemidlin: What is one image of nature you see repeated in your work? (This could be an animal, a landscape…)
Kimiko Hahn: That is a funny question because it coincides with my poetics and with a lesson I often scrawl on the blackboard: I ask my students, “What do these words have in common: pine, leaves, rose, stem, hedges?” And, of course, someone suggests nature. Yes, but I am looking for the reply that they are all nouns and verbs. I want the words to work hard. Which is all to say that pine frequents my writings. In all senses of the word. (I learned this in part from Japanese poetry where multiple meanings are particularly valued. Matsu means both pine tree and to wait. So, if one is under a pine tree, there may be the sense of waiting.)
Chemidlin: When you’re writing a poem, is nature a place where you begin, or is nature something that finds its way into the poem after you’ve started writing?
Hahn: Both a starting point and a creative space where I often find my self. If just jotting something down in the morning, I often look up then start writing. What I most often see is a tree in its season or an insect on the screen.
Chemidlin: Are there any specific poets you think of when you think of nature poetry?
Hahn: Bashō. More recent poets are David Baker and Rajiv Mohabir: both have recent collections having to do with whales. And I love Ellen Bryant Voigt’s later work.
Chemidlin: You are known to be a very formally inventive poet. When coming up with new forms, do you ever draw inspiration from the shapes and patterns found in the natural world?
Hahn: The poem that has most to do with shapes and patterns is “The Cryptic Chamber,” a longish poem on the paper nautilus (argonaut). In zoology, “Cryptic” refers to camouflage. And, of course, I am playing with the sense of “mysterious.” The same with “chamber”: its shell and also a space for–what? mystery? Apparently, too, the shell’s logarithmic spirals echo the arms of hurricanes and galaxies!
In the poem (published in Foreign Bodies), I reference argonaut information and also erase that information:
I guess–thinking more about your question–nature did influence the pattern or structure, but unconsciously. Erasure and the dangered status were a bit on-the-nose. Sigh.
It’s an interesting question! I guess, more generally, I am interested in toying with repetition and, as is obvious, repetition keeps our heart going, keeps us alive. We don’t notice unless there is a deviation from the beat. repetition / deviation
Chemidlin: What is one thing you do to combat writer’s block?
Hahn: I like routine so I try to write in the mornings, even if only a line or two. To do so, I usually have some kind of prompt such as a form that I’ve never tried. Lately I’ve been writing poems that, in one way or other, give homage to past writers. The glosa and golden shovel are forms that offer this route. I also like to “talk back” to a writer or poem by using their lines inside the draft or as the title or epigraph.
I also find myself captivated by the language of science–which is how I ended up with three collections having much to do with science: for Toxic Flora, I wrote “off of” various articles from the science section of the New York Times. For Brain Fever, I turned to the NYT for articles specifically on neuroscience. Foreign Bodies, while not entirely focused on science, contains three long poems on Dr. Chevalier Quixote Jackson, Mary Anning, and the aforementioned “Cryptic Chamber.”
Chemidlin: What is one piece of advice you would give to a new poet who wants to write nature poems?
Hahn: As just described, more often than not I use some kind of prompt. It’s important to remember that a prompt differs from an assignment. A prompt is meant to get the process going; an assignment is an exercise to be fulfilled. Example: write a poem about the tree outside your window. As an assignment, you must write about that tree. As a prompt, you might end up writing about a glacier a million miles away or a metal lunch box.
Advice? Think up a bunch of prompts that start with nature. Here are three off-the-cuff: Ode to a Pond. A nature-related news quote as your working title. Talk back to a favorite nature poem?
In general, though, it’s important to let go of the subject. If you don’t write a nature poem, keep trying and at some point, something will appear.
Chemidlin: At a time when more and more of the natural world is being destroyed, how do you think poems “help” nature?
Hahn: It’s surprising how many people write poetry so there are writers all around you. One can connect with them and create community (which can lead to action, modest or momentous). Fostering a caring community is radical.
Learn more about the Nature Poetry Prize here