Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?: Poetry Power Couples
It’s no secret we love poets over here at The Poetry Lab… it’s, you know, our thing. But what do we love even more than poets? Poets who love other poets! The ones who really love each other, who are in love with each other.
So what better way to close out ThE mOnTh Of LoVe than with a listicle of some poetry power couples that will leave us asking ourselves… Should I give my number to that cutie at the open mic next week?
Major and Didi Jackson
Major and Didi Jackson. Source: Instagram
When Didi’s full-length collection, Moon Song, came out, it immediately received praise from New York Times best-selling author, Ann Hood, and Pulitzer-prize-winning poet, Tracy K. Smith. Throughout the pages of her debut publication, Didi chronicles her first husband’s death by suicide, her subsequent grief, and finding new love with her now-husband, poet Major Jackson.
Major Jackson has a long list of full-length publications. His latest, Razzle Dazzle, was published in 2023 with WW Norton. Described by the publisher as a “sustained portrait of a poet,” this collection features new work as well as highlights from his 20-year-long literary career.
Why We Love Them
First, they both teach creative writing. Before relocating to Nashville and continuing their careers at Vanderbilt University, they were both at the University of Vermont. Not many couples could survive living and working together.
Also, they were featured together in Aquifer, each of them sharing a love poem. Their love for each other lifts off from the page filling readers’ eyes with both little cartoon hearts and deep envy.
Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley
Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley. Source: Facebook.
Megan, the mastermind behind the well-known introductory online poetry course Poems That Don’t Suck, published three full-length poetry collections and was a finalist for both the National Poetry Slam and Women of the World Poetry Slam.
Though they have many accolades to their name, Andrea most recently received the distinction of Colorado’s Poet Laureate. While living with and battling both Chronic Lyme Disease and ovarian cancer, they have been inspiring the world with not only their poetry, but with their open-hearted and vulnerable inspirational videos and newsletters.
Why We Love Them
First, they co-authored this travel-size writing guide How Poetry Can Change Your Heart, which is both a guide to using poetry for creative expression as well as a plea to forget what you were taught in high school about the dead-white-man canon of poetry—poetry is for everyone and can be written by anyone! Hell yeah!
Second, if you haven’t listened to Andrea and Megan’s “double date” with Glennon Doyle and Amy Wambach, stop reading this article right now and go take a listen. If you aren’t totally enamored with Andrea and Megan’s love by the end of it, you’ll have to take your much-too-small heart back up the hills behind Whoville to Mt. Crumpit.
Katie Farris and Ilya Kaminsky
Katie Ferris and Ilya Kaminsky. Source: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Katie’s multiple publications have received praise from acclaimed poets such as Carolyn Forché, Victoria Chang, and Jericho Brown. Her most recent collection, Standing in the Forest of Being Alive, was listed as a Publisher’s Weekly’s Top 10 Poetry Books for 2023. She not only thrives in the English language, though. She has also co-authored several translated collections in multiple languages including Ukrainian, French, Chinese, and Russian.
Ilya might be best known for his most recent poetry collection, Deaf Republic, which was deemed The New York Times’s Notable Book, and was also named Best Book of the Year by dozens of other publications. (It is also one of my all-time favorite collections). A lawyer by education, Ilya worked as a law clerk for San Francisco Legal Aid and the National Immigration Law Center and still provides pro-bono advocacy for orphaned children.
Why We Love Them
Like Didi and Major Jackson, Katie and Ilya both work in the same academic institution: Princeton University. But this touching braided essay co-written by the married couple and published on Oprah Daily will split your heart right open…in a good way…you know, like a piñata.
Franny Choi and Cameron Awkward-Rich
Franny Choi and Cameron Awkward-Rich with friends. Source: Instagram.
Cameron’s essays and poems have been widely published in prestigious literary journals, and in addition to his two full-length collections of poetry, Cameron authored The Terrible We: Thinking with Trans Maladjustment, which earned the Duke University Press Scholars of Color First Book Award. He is a tenured professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst specializing in women, gender, and sexuality studies.
Inventor of the Hangul Abecedarian, a poetic form spotlighting the phonemes of the Korean alphabet, Franny published three full-length poetry collections and has a trail of accolades including fellowships from Kundiman, VONA, and the Rhode Island State Council. They co-hosted the Poetry Foundation’s podcast, VS, with fellow poet Danez Smith, and founded Brew & Forge, an organization whose mission is to amplify “the collective power of writers and other artists to alchemize dreaming and build capacity in movements for liberation, justice, and survival.”
Why We Love Them
While still very much enmeshed in the pandemic, Franny interviewed Cameron for the Poetry Foundation’s podcast VS during which they discussed their experiences with social distancing and isolation, Cameron’s collection of poems Dispatch, and their cat, Bean (CUTEST CAT NAME EVER!).
They tied the knot in 2023, and if you follow them on the ‘Gram, then you probably already scrolled through these gorgeous photos of their ceremony with a tear in your eye.
Matthew Olzmann and Vievee Francis
Vievee is the author of three poetry collections, of which her most recent, Forest Primeval, earned the very prestigious Kingsley Tufts poetry award. A tenured professor at Dartmouth College, Vievee is also an associate editor for the premier journal of African American and African Diaspora Arts & Letters, Callaloo.
Matthew Olzmann also authored three poetry collections (all through Alice James Books) and works at Dartmouth College as a senior lecturer of creative writing. He previously served as an editor for The Collagist literary journal and has received a number of accolades including fellowships from the Kresge Arts Foundation, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop.
Why We Love Them
At the 2024 AWP conference in Kansas City, MO, Jericho Brown spoke on a panel with Matthew, and he said of Matthew, “[He] is the king of poetry. I know he is the king because he is married to the queen,” to which Jericho received resounding applause and some chuckles.
Matthew and Vievee’s love poetry was featured together, although on separate episodes of a literary podcast series, Poetry Unbound (part of the ongoing series On Being.) Matthew’s poem for Vievee, “Mountain Dew Commercial Disguised as a Love Poem,” is like a modern version of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnet 43 (the one that famously starts, “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”).
Vievee’s poem for Matthew, “How Delicious to Say It,” also features a list-like quality to it, though with a list of “delicious” words—her husband’s name being her favorite. (Stop! No you stop!)
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Are you swooning yet? Already writing a love poem to your poet crush?
If you need even more lovey-dovey goodness in your life after reading this article, head over to Poetry Lab contributor, Ginger Ayla’s article 10 Contemporary Love Poems.
Do you have a favorite poetry power couple you didn’t see on this list? Let us know and maybe we’ll feature them in a Poetry Power Couples 2.0 article.
This article was published on February 28, 2024. Written by:
