I am a Poet: Yanyi

anyi is a writer and critic. He is the author of Dream of the Divided Field (One World Random House, forthcoming 2022) and The Year of Blue Water (Yale University Press 2019), winner of the 2018 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize. His work has been featured in NPR’s All Things Considered, Tin House, Granta, and A Public Space, and he is the recipient of fellowships from Asian American Writers’ Workshop and Poets House. Currently, he is poetry editor at Foundry and a poetry review editor at Public Books. Find him at yanyiii.com.

What are you eating for comfort?

Cake.

What are you binge watching? re-watching?

Nothing really until this week. I was watching Love Is Blind then stopped. Am now returning to Great British Bake-off.

What was the last thing that made you smile or laugh?

My nascent sourdough starter.

What is a poem you’d like to share with our readers?

I haven’t been reading with or for pleasure. Keep trying to start A Village Life by Louise Glück over and over again, which is to say I keep reading one stanza of one poem over and over again.

Is there anything else you’d like to tell our readers?

There is a future. I haven’t predicted it but I hope to imagine it.

Photo by Michelle Meier