Michael Kleber-Diggs
Award-winning poet, essayist, and parent of an artist.
Michael Klber-Diggs is a poet, essayist, literary critic, and arts educator. He is the author of Worldly Things,which won the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize and was published by Milkweed Editions in 2021. His essay, “There Was a Tremendous Softness,” appears in A Darker Wilderness:Black Nature Writing from Soil to Stars, edited by Erin Sharkey (Milkweed Editions, 2023). His poems and essays often explore themes of intimacy, community, empathy, and grace, practices he believes are simultaneously distinct and interdependent. Michael is a 2023-2025 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow in Literature, and he teaches creative writing through the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop and at universities in the Twin Cities. He is married to Karen Kleber-Diggs, a tropical horticulturist and orchid specialist. Karen and Michael have a daughter, Elinor, who lives in New York City and works as a professional dancer.
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Mentioned in this episode:
William Carlos Williams (a poet-doctor)
Richard Blanco (a poet-engineer)
Juliet Patterson (Michael’s mentor)
“Poems arrive by captivation; I am captivated by something.”
“Any advice that doesn’t account for all the ways it can be done is bad writing advice.”