Mary Simmons is a queer poet from Cleveland, Ohio. She is the author of Mother, Daughter, Augur (June Road Press, October 2025). She earned her MFA from Bowling Green State University, where she also served as the managing editor for Mid-American Review. Her work has appeared in The Baltimore Review, ONE ART, trampset, Moon City Review, Variant Lit, The Shore, and elsewhere. She lives with her cat, Suki, at the edge of the woods.
--bio courtesy of Mary Simmons
What inspires you in your current writing?
Currently, I’ve been very focused on the midwestern landscape (Northeast Ohio, where I grew up, specifically) and a sort of ordinary, everyday magic. I get a lot of my inspiration simply from walking in the woods and finding little curiosities to look up later. I am also currently interested in trying to interrogate certain big, philosophical questions through small moments and observations, turning these nebulous, abstract things into very real, tangible, and beautifully mundane things.
What has been the best and the most challenging part of publishing your debut book?
The best part has certainly been working with my editor/publisher Sara Arnold. June Road Press is such a perfect home for my book, and Sara has made the whole process feel so smooth, fun, and rewarding. The most challenging part was finding that perfect home for the book. I know it’s said a lot, but as a writer, you do truly face a lot of rejections before you get that acceptance. On top of that, there’s that element of making sure that when that acceptance does come, it’s the right home for your book. Luckily, Sara made that portion a little easier, too, by giving me lots of information and resources to look at to determine that this was the best fit. The other challenging part was writing the book description—luckily, Sara came to my rescue
How do you decide when to use line breaks?
Some line breaks are decided largely by visual or sonic heft. It’s not that all lines have to be similar in length or sound, but it does play a role in how it reads both on the page and out loud. When I was in undergrad, I took a Contemporary World Poetry class with Dr. Sharon Kubasak. She always encouraged us to read each line individually, sit with it, and then move to the next, allowing each line to have its own individual meanings as well as the combined meanings as the poem unfolds and builds. Because of this, I like using line breaks to create turns, multifaceted images, and little moments of surprise. This isn’t always the case, but I do like to try to sit with each line individually as I go through my revision process, just to see if there are places where the line breaks could be doing more (or, in some cases, need to be doing less) in order to give the poem the breath, room, and spring in its step that will bring it to its truest form.
What inspired your new collection, Mother, Daughter, Augur, coming out this fall?
With this collection, I wanted to challenge and transform definitions of femininity through reclamation of fairytale, myth, and legend. I’ve always been fascinated by storytelling and the power it has over shaping our realities and perceptions of self. I also am drawn to gothic sensibilities and Victorian naturalist collections, which both influenced the atmosphere of this book. I wanted to write a shapeshifting tome that explores yearning, mortality, relationships, gender, queerness, nature, change, and grief in ways both dark and comforting.
If you weren’t a poet, what do you think you would do instead?
I think there’s definitely an alternate timeline where I end up being an architect. I was always building things out of paper as a kid, finding ways to use folding and taping to make these elaborate buildings and structures. I think I was always destined to design and build, in some shape or form, it’s just that my tools as a poet are words.
What do you use as motivation to finish long/large projects?
I very much take things one step at a time: one idea, one image, one line, one poem. I’m very detail-oriented, and I genuinely enjoy being in the soup, as it were. If I zoom out to the big picture too soon, it can get overwhelming. So I focus on what I’m working on in the moment, on creating poetry scraps that then become full poems, and full poems that then become sequences, and sequences that then become a collection. I’ve recently started mining through my work to try to craft a first draft of book two, and have been pleasantly surprised by just how much of it is already coming together. I never try to think of my work, while initially writing it, in terms of what it will contribute to big picture; I just let myself fall a little in love with each poem, and honor each poem as its own tiny universe. It’s a lot easier to create a bigger universe when you approach it as just one tiny universe after the other!
What influence do you want to have on other people with your poetry?
I want my poetry to inspire curiosity, conversation, and self-reflection. I want my readers to bring their whole selves to my work and to meet me halfway. My poetry is very personal, and I hope, in that way, can open up into something simultaneously intimate and universal. I want my poetry to feel individual to anyone who reads it, as though I am speaking to them, in particular.
What is your process for editing/revising poems?
Every poem asks for something different when it comes to editing and revising, but as a rule, my process always begins with stepping away from it for a bit. Whether this is an hour, a day, or a few weeks (or months, or years) is truly dependent on the poem and how long it takes me to change my headspace enough to look at it from a different point of view. I like to read a poem out loud just to hear it, which is huge in finding sonic areas I might want to change. I also often copy-paste the poem so I can play with it while keeping the original version. I have a few trusted peers I like to send my work to as well, usually with an explanation of my intent and/or specific questions I have, because I find that blind reactions aren’t quite as helpful. I want to set my workshoppers up for success by letting them know how I want it to read, pinpointing specific problem areas (if I have any in mind), and providing them with the tools to truly help my work in what I call the “wet clay” phase. But some works I do revise on my own, because there are some works that call for that. It’s all about listening to the poem, which isn’t a neat or easy answer (I also wish there was a one size fits all model!), and it’s something I’m still very much working on. At the same time, it’s what keeps poetry from growing stagnant, at least for me. So, a double-edged sword, but definitely something I’ll keep refining (and I may have a totally different answer about this process in even a year or two–that’s what makes it fun!).
Did you ever imagine you would be where you are now when you started writing?
Honestly, yes and no! I’ve been writing since I was quite little, and I think I did have the childhood cockiness that led me to believe I could be a writer and a Broadway actress and have a pet tiger and all those fun things. So, in some ways, that sense of childhood wonder that still lives in me very much imagined and believed in it, and still does, and is part of why I keep at it. But of course, there’s the practical side–mostly developed during my teenage years–that has had its doubts, and sometimes still does. But for the past five years, I’ve been working on this book (before I even knew it would turn into a book!), and while sometimes it feels so surreal that it’s finally going out into the world through a press that is such a perfect fit, at the same time, I know full well that I worked for this and have truly dreamed it into being. I will say, though, little me was convinced I was going to go into fiction rather than poetry. That was a pleasant surprise toward the end of my undergrad years!
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Interview Contributors:
Aspyn Chapin
Darbie deFreese
Hallie Hartman
Claire Hudson
Alizabeth McDermott
Cosmo Morain
Tynlie Struss
Jaelyn Trew
Samantha Vinchattle