‘Poetry’ Editor-in-Chief Adrian Matejka Looks to the Future

Just over a year ago, Adrian Matejka became the editor of Poetry Magazine. It’s a daunting job for anyone to helm such a storied American literary institutions, and Matejka, the first person of color to head the magazine, took the job understanding what it has been and what it might be.

This year, in addition to celebrating his first anniversary at Poetry, Matejka released a graphic novel, Last On His Feet: Jack Johnson and the Battle of the Century, a collaboration with the artist Youssef Daoudi. Matejka has been researching and writing about Jack Johnson since 2005, first for his acclaimed poetry collection The Big Smoke and now for Last on His Feet,which is the result of a deep collaborative process between writer and artist

Matejka, the author of five books of poems, has by his own admission been de-centering the writing of poetry. I spoke with him about what that meant and how his work has changed, his deep love for comics, and the recent changes at the magazine.

Alex Dueben: We were talking earlier about how often in art and institutions, it’s hard to build something lasting. Last year you took over an institution—one of the American literary and cultural institutions.

Adrian Matejka: It’s wild. 110 years. The oldest monthly poetry magazine in the world. There’s so much wonderful history here. And also a very complicated legacy in terms of gatekeeping and the tradition of king- and queen-making. I want to untangle that. I want to de-center our editorial team and make Poetry a space that is more inclusive than it was in the past. And to really center poets and their work. That’s what the magazine is about. The recent editors and guest editors have been good about trying to open up the pages, so what I’m working toward is not some brand new thing.

One of the ways we’ve been celebrating and interrogating what 110 years looks like is through archival folios. We’ve been dedicating pages to people who should have been in the magazine before but weren’t given the space. The 110th anniversary issue had one dedicated to , a Chicago poet and co-founder of . She had been a finalist for the National Book Award, but she, who was part of the Black Arts Movement. He’s a beautiful poet, has been publishing for 40 years, and had never been in Poetry. The responses to these folios has been gratifying. So I’ve been trying to as best as I can grapple with the magazine’s history—to honor it, but also hold it accountable. And hold us as editors accountable to make some lasting change to the editorial philosophy.