Since 2015, @poetryisnotaluxury has become one of the most visible and widely followed sources of poetry on the Internet. Today, the account, founded and run single-handedly by an anonymous curator on Instagram (and now on Bluesky as well), has a devoted following of nearly 845,000. This spring, for the first time, the creator of @poetryisnotaluxury has taken their sharing of poems into an analog form; their first collection of poems, titled Poetry Is Not a Luxury, is out on May 6 from Washington Square Press. With our cameras off on Zoom, I spoke with the Los Angeles–based figure behind the beloved account about what it means to release a poetry anthology into the world in this particular sociocultural moment, why they think of the book as a “mixtape,” their decision to remain anonymous, and their hopes that the book will reach and resonate with committed poetry lovers and those new to the form, alike.

Sara Franklin: I want to begin by asking how, and maybe by whom, poetry first came into your life.

#PoetryIsNotALuxury: I feel like in some ways it happened listening to a Leonard Cohen song on headphones. I remember that moment, listening to a song and thinking, oh, I just really want to read things that are this concrete and this concise. I’m obsessed with words. I always have been. That was the breakthrough, to realize that I just am filled with sentences already. Poetry is almost like a little bite, a little song, and I just love the way poems can condense an emotion or really express one. I decided to take a poetry class at Pasadena City College, and then I never looked back.

I first fell in love with Gwendolyn Brooks, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, Jim Harrison. And then some of the newer poets like Saeed Jones and Victoria Chang started trickling in. I just started collecting. I was always looking on other poet’s posts online and discovering poems that way. I definitely love the Academy of American Poets’ site, where you can type a word into their search and see what poems are going to come. I dove deep in that way. And I feel like it really happened in the last two decades, maybe since the world started to crumble more. My parents passed away, too.

SF: I lost both my parents in my early twenties as well, and I wonder if that was part of the gateway to poetry for me. Somehow I needed it differently because of that.

#PINAL: Yes. For me, there were certain poems about grief, about losing parents, that were so important to dealing with those feelings. There are a couple anthologies on grief. I could go to them, and was like, oh, yes, this is exactly what I’m feeling, what I need to read. Also, I’m a big fan of crying my head off. So it was, you know, take me there, please. And sharing with other people that had lost loved ones followed naturally.

SF: The dominant thread of this culture really refuses to acknowledge and ritualize grief, and poetry is one of those places we can go to grieve, to feel everything and anything. And so, I’m really curious about the moment into which you’re publishing this book, and the ways in which we need places where we can grieve. I’m curious how you’re thinking about that.

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#PINAL: I hope we have space for it. I mean everything is so overwhelming, which seems like a small word for what it is. But I think in some ways having poems that are just about being alive, and being reminded we’re connected in any way, at this point, seems important.

I’ve been thinking about this book for so long, and then it finally happened, and it did feel weird that it was coming out after the election. I was like, are we even going to have books? How will we navigate this? Personally, I do need a break from all the things going on, sometimes to just sit with poetry and be inside of that kind of connection with others through those words. I’m hoping that’s the same thing that maybe other people are going to reach for and think about: how these poems are talking about the whole of experience. These poems are relevant.

SF: Ada Limón said to me in an interview last year that she feels poetry is one of the very few spaces left that we can be private. We can sit with a poem in private, and it creates room in which to feel things. I’m curious how you see the connection between poetry’s private and public function, and the power of what poetry can do in this time?

#PINAL: One of the things about the Audre Lorde essay, “Poetry Is Not a Luxury,” which I read so often, is that poetry connects us to our feelings, and in a lot of ways connects us to each other. Poetry can push you to see your own courage or strengths. It’s sort of like a refueling station when you’re reading. A place to rebuild yourself after you’ve been overly stimulated by information. With poetry, you’re able to pull back.

Being private is such a part of it for me sitting with a poetry book. I do think we need that kind of space now, and with specific words. And I think, too, the voices that come from the 13th century, the 1920s, ’60s, and ’70s, they’re talking about things that are still relevant. We’re still dealing with these same things. Maybe this is just the story of being a person on this planet, and you can take those powerful sentences written about that protest and say, oh we’re still fighting this fight as a populace. I share a lot of little bits of poems with my friends and sometimes it’s just a line or two that you can almost repeat like a mantra in your head. And maybe that helps you steel yourself up for the next go around.

SF: The idea of framing poems as refueling stations is powerful and very useful. There’s a practical element to it that pushes back against some of the attitudes towards poetry that run through American culture, which is that it’s too elite, or too abstract. But it is really useful to read a poem, to sit with a poem in the midst of the fullness and the overwhelm of life. Can you tell me the story of how Poetry Is Not a Luxury as a project began, and how you decided to launch this avatar into the world?

#PINAL: It was kind of a wonderful accident, honestly. I always think about the Lorde essay. To think about surviving, we need art. I need words to move through the world. At that time, my whole phone was filled with screenshots or pictures of pages from books I took, and I thought, I need to put these somewhere else. Because I love so many of these books, I thought, I’ll start a page. I didn’t think at all about anyone else seeing it. I mean, I left it open to the public, but I wasn’t like savvy with the whole platform. I just did it on a whim. It grew slowly. I remember a few English teachers messaged me saying, “I put you on my syllabus,” which was amazing. And then I think I got an offer to do an interview, and that was the moment when I was like, oh, I can’t! I don’t want to be a person in this. I just thought of it almost like a book or a place, and not a self, not a page about a person. That’s when I decided, I don’t want this to be in my name. I want this to be in the name of all the poets and poetry. Then the pandemic happened, and that was like a second wave of finding other people and finding that my habit of reading poetry suddenly seemed important to others. It really opened up then. How exciting it was to introduce people to all these poets. That was a thrill.

SF: Has your insistence on remaining anonymous evolved or deepened for you as this platform and your audience has grown?

#PINAL: I want to put all the spotlight on the poets. You rarely know the librarian that you’re getting recommendations from, or you know, we never knew what the DJs looked like. I think like that. I just want to share the work. For me, that is the opportunity: to share all these poems and all these poets in that way.

SF: I really admire your integrity around that stance.

#PINAL: I want these words to be the thing that you’re left with, and I think it’s best when there isn’t another thing in the way of them. When you’re just given a poem, and you can sit with it.

SF: I remember when there was a real resistance to putting poetry on the internet in such an easily accessible way. But, nowadays, more and more people are reading poetry because of social media and the Internet. What are your thoughts on that reluctance to allow poetry to enter new forms of technology?

#PINAL: I do come from the theater world, so I know those gatekeepers. But it is such a perfect place to post something that is, you know, a page long. Of course the platforms have their own problems, and maybe we shouldn’t have to log in to be a part of them. But I do think the online world has helped poetry be more accessible, and how could that be a bad thing? A lot of the young people coming up in poetry aren’t carrying all this baggage about what it is supposed to be, and how it’s supposed to be shared. This is a good shift. Because how cool is it that more people are reading poetry, and that it’s so relevant and immediate, you know? I think that’s incredible. If it took social media to do that, that’s a decent trade off with all the other stuff, right?

SF: I love that you call this collection a mixtape. Was there a particular poem or poems that you built the collection around?

#PINAL: The truth is, even before the opportunity to do this book, I’ve had folders of themed, categorized poems for some future anthology. Love poems, poems of protest, poems about the color blue, rain poems. I was always doing that naturally. And very much like a mixtape, I was thinking, you read one, and then this one just sort of comes next. That’s how I’ve posted onto Instagram the whole time.

There were certain ones that I wanted in there no matter what. “Thank You” by Ross Gay, absolutely, though I was so worried I wouldn’t be able to get permission for it. I think of Kim Addonizio’s poem “To the Woman Crying Uncontrollably in the Next Stall” as a staple if you want to show someone what poetry is. It feels so accessible and relatable, and I’ve shared it with so many people who thought they didn’t like poetry, and then are like, oh! I like poetry! There are so many shorter poems in there that I just I’ll never really get over. Molly Brodak, “How to Not Be a Perfectionist,” or Langston Hughes, “Advice.”

SF: How would you like this collection to be received? And is there a vulnerability point around its release?

#PINAL: It would be great if people wanted poetry collections like this, just for the sake of poetry. Like, something you grab right before you get on an airplane. Or reading first thing in the morning. I’m hoping that people let go of any hesitation and just give it a try. You know, I’m so proud of the poets that are in there. I think it’s so important that they become household names…. I hope that that can be a thing that we do: sharing poems becoming an everyday exchange between people. I’d love that.

The vulnerability is these poems are so close to me. Like moments I’ve lived, like friends or places I’ve traveled. It’s like showing vacation photos or really intimate portraits taken in private. You hope there’s not too much of your insides showing. But it is also so good to release, to open up and share.