Maggie Dillow is our Summer 2025 Tiny Resident, who ran our workshop Mourning Papers: Writing the Future into the Present.

What kindles your creativity?

The word kindles feels so correct here. What is always rumbling beneath, begging to be caught up by even the smallest flame? For me, the answer is to read what I most want to write and then walk in the woods. But that’s only for work that feels like it needs to take its first breaths in solitude. But some work arrives only in the company of others; I love creating in community, especially with my collective, the Post-apocalyptic Poets for a Pre-apocalyptic World. The absurdity, the tenderness, the wild laughter, the inconsolable joy that arises from making art in a serious way with people who understand the value of making art in an unserious way? Immeasurable. Precious.

Are there any artists/ heroines/ idols/ friends that you look up to?

So many. Currently, I find myself turning repeatedly to Molly Brodak’s The Cipher and Little Middle of the Night. Brodak’s words are placed so carefully; her work displays a degree of precision so at odds with my naturally haphazard way of writing; reading her poetry, looking for how/what’s operating beneath its (at first sight, at least) opaqueness helps me slow down when I turn to my own page and asks me to leave more underneath. Also, growing up in the ’90s, the Guerrilla Girls and the Riot grrrl movements had a profound impact on my desire to always marry poetics to performance. Also also, the photographers Sally Mann, Graciela Iturbide, and Justine Kurland. And all of my friends, of course. In particular, my podcast co-host Marin, for her unwavering ability to have a singular focus and see a writing project all the way to its end every single time. I envy this. Deeply. 

Are there any natural entities that move your work?

The natural entities that move my work are the natural entities that move us all, I think: the wind (both breezy and dangerous) the water (especially Lake Michigan, the lake that raised me) the dirt (clay, silt, sand) the moon (obviously) the sky (open and closed) the clouds (full or hazy sheets) and any flowers and everything else. Even if that isn’t what I’m writing about. I’m moved to make when I’m staring at what is already made, what makes itself, what we wonder about having been made. This always leads me to the question of god, who I do not believe in, who I cannot believe in, but who anyway finds themselves in all of my work, much of which is a prayer to anything. 

We love insight into the creative process. Could you share what it is like for you?

My work begins in my mind. Well, obviously. But I mean, paragraphs worth of what I intend to say start creeping in, like the invasive kudzu vines currently covering acres of wild land in a violent swaddle here in Southwest Virginia. It feels that heavy, infectious, even. And eventually “it” begins to spill out, either into my notes app (if I’m walking through the woods) or on sheets of copy paper I’ve cut in half to use as scraps due to my inability to print out the correct amount of copies for my students (if I’m inside) or even— but much less likely— in one of the many half-used and frequently-forgotten  journals I’ve purchased for just such an occasion. 

But when it begins to creep, I try to get to the woods as soon as possible and walk through them until the first of it has been divulged via the talk-to-text function on my smartphone with whom I of course have a love/hate relationship due to how central it is to my writing process, for better and worse. And I know my phone is not a person. And I know this all sounds a bit melodramatic. But it’s just how it arrives: when I’m walking, all at once, like heavy vines and then disseminated directly into a dystopian tool of communicative technology. 

Do you have any current or future projects that you are working on that you would like to share?

I’m really, really trying not to have any projects right now. But I do have one, called (shockingly) Mourning Papers. It’s a work in progress and I talk about it in the workshop. 

What book, artwork, music, etc., would you recommend to others?

Books: The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch. Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood. Literally any poetry ever. Everything by Toni Morrison, of course. And anything written by your friends. Artwork: See: Photographers I listed in question 2. Music: Lingua Ignota. The Distillers’ 2002 album Sing Sing Death House. Portishead. Martha Wainwright. Too many to list. Also: consider giving the following cult-classic ’90s shows a (re)watch: The X-files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Twin Peaks. They are by no means perfect, but they are by all means of a very particular point in time to which we cannot return. 

Is there anything else you would like others to know about you, your creations, or beyond?

I have a guinea pig named Guillermo Girard Rocket Coyote “Popcorn” and he is the light of my life. He recently had to have emergency surgery and it broke my heart entirely in two. He’s currently on the mend and my partner and I are already planning the birthday bash we’re gonna have for him for his 5th solar return on November 20, 2025. It’s gonna be a rager. 

Where can people learn more about what you do?

I’m currently on a social media hiatus because scrolling through the algorithm was beginning to fill my body with the same sensation as smoking used to. And I really miss cigarettes. But since leaving the ethers of Instagram, I don’t really miss the algorithm. Which is worth saying, I suppose, since I decided to write it out. Anyway, you can still find me there from time to time to announce things: mainly pictures of Guillermo: @_saint_margaret_ and with my collective: @postapocalpytic_poets and with my podcast: @girlhoodmoviedatabase. Mostly, though, I enjoy writing essays on Substack at a little page called Epistles from an American Poet. I also have a website: maggiedillow.com. Oh and Girlhood Movie Database can be listened to anywhere you get your podcasts!