Poet Maya C. Popa on writing with wonder, the ruthless craft of revision, and building a sustainable life in poetry.

You’ll learn

Why wonder has more in common with the sublime — the beautiful and the terrible — than with simple delight.
How a poem loses its charge the moment its ending is visible from the opening line.
What “negative capability” asks of a writer stuck in the dark middle of a draft.
The question worth asking when the work feels uncomfortable and you’re certain something has gone wrong.
A ruthless method for finding a poem’s true entry point — often buried three-quarters of the way down.
When to cut the images you love most, even the ones that took hours to invent.
How to write about longing and love without collapsing into confession.
Why asking your writing to carry your finances can quietly poison your relationship with it.
What to guard at all costs while holding space for other writers.
The freedom that arrives once rejection stops meaning anything at all.

Resources & Links

About Maya C. Popa

Maya C. Popa is a Romanian American poet. She holds a PhD on the role of wonder in poetry from Goldsmiths, University of London, where she was a recipient of a department bursary for exceptional merit, and previous degrees from Oxford University, New York University, and Barnard College.

Popa is the author of If You Love That Lady (W. W. Norton, 2026); Wound Is the Origin of Wonder (W. W. Norton, 2022), named one of the Guardian’s Best Books of Poetry; and American Faith (Sarabande, 2019), a runner-up for the Kathryn A. Morton Prize, judged by Ocean Vuong, and winner of the North American Book Prize in 2020. She has also received awards from the Poetry Foundation and the Oxford Poetry Society.

Popa is the poetry reviews editor at Publishers Weekly and is the founder of Conscious Writers Collective, where she teaches and oversees all literary programming for poets and prose writers. She lives in New York City.

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