nolan cowan

March 27, 2026

In this interview Dialogue staff member Erin Hasler sits down with Nolan Cowan to learn more about his growth as a poet, his passion for Creative Writing: Poetry, his process, and his biggest literary influences.

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Erin: Let’s get started!  How did you get into writing?

Nolan: I’ve kind of always been interested in writing, but I didn't think that it was going to be the focus of my life until I took Creative Writing: Poetry with Professor Katt the fall of my sophomore year.  And then I fell in love immediately. I've changed my major like seven different times.  I think that I wanted to study something that was as broad as possible because I was interested in a lot of different things. I think writing allows me to explore a lot of different avenues and topics.  So I think that that allowed me to have a pretty broad arena of play for what I wanted to do.

E: Do you find that poetry is your main mode of writing?

N: Yeah, it's the one that I'm good at. [laughs] I've written some fiction. I've written some nonfiction.  It doesn't click. Poetry is the only one that really clicked for me. I think it's really intuitive for some reason. And I just haven't found that to be the case for other genres.

E: So had you written poetry before your class with Klatt?

N: I had written a couple poems in AP literature. My AP Lit teacher my senior year of high school was really, really cool. We would do these poetry competitions for class where every week he would put out a couple words and we’d have to write a poem and fit all the words into it. I messed around with that, but I wasn’t writing anything super amazing. I took that class [with Klatt] because I was interested in poetry. I actually just took it because I needed to. I had 14 credits and I was like, “I want to get my money's worth, you know, I'll go up to 18.”  I took that class just because I was like, “I've written a poem once or twice.” Then it all spiralled out from there.

E: Since you mentioned that writing allows you to explore a lot of different things, do you find that there are specific themes or ideas that you’re really drawn to?

N: I'm really interested right now in historical poems. It’s a growing movement in American poetry, especially in African American poetry, because obviously there’s a complex history there and it's the painful histories that poetry gives voice to. I've always been really interested in history. My dad is a history professor. So I think I'm really interested in applying that historical thinking to my poetic work, and seeing how poetry can interact with the historical archive and shape narratives.

E: So kind of off of that, how have you seen your poems develop over time?

N: Oh, boy… We were talking about that first edition of Dialogue that I submitted to in my sophomore year, I was still taking the poetry class at the time.  And I remember the issue came out, and I remember reading those poems and being amazed at how much my style had changed, even over just the course of the semester. I mean, I'm still proud of those poems, but I shifted dramatically in style and content matter. I get bored easily, so I'm always trying to do the newest, biggest thing. But specifically, I think that my first body of poems that I wrote for that class, I was writing a lot about the body and about water because I was taking this class on on the history of the West, and water is a super important factor in Western history because there's not a lot of water out there. So that was my first topical interest. I started out writing philosophical poems. I think I've gotten a lot more grounded. Right now I'm really interested in energy, seeing how the energies of different words or different images can play off each other.

"run! river, run to the poor man and drown him!

Fill up his lungs with your cool, rich water and he

is like a balloon which some careless child has

carelessly stuck on the backyard spigot;

throw him onto the pavement and he will burst, my body.

Lick up his plastic and shout praise, my body."

From Amos To His Blood Vessels, Issue 57.1

E: So what’s your favorite poem, if you had to pick one?

N:  That's a great question…  I definitely have an answer. Definitely not anything that was written when I was, like, 16.  It's definitely "Even riverbirds cry", which is in Dialogue. I'm really

proud of that poem.

E: Could you say more about what you like about it?

N:  It's pretty dynamic. There’s definitely movement between the characters. I like that it has characters, even though it's not characters in the typical sense. I think the language is really bright and interesting. And I think that poem is the culmination of a lot of things that I was doing with line work and typography. I think that's the most mature version of what I want to play with right now.

E: Have you found that Dialogue has played any part in your creative journey?

N: Yeah, definitely. I think it's such a cool, opportunity, because it's really hard to publish stuff.  Even if you're really good. It’s a huge confidence booster and stepping stone. I'm really thankful for that. And I do think it's a part of the process that is really important, and it's hard to get that without publishing—finalizing a piece and letting it go. I will make all these little minor changes all the time.  I think the last few poems I sent into Dialogue, I felt bad because I had rewritten a bunch of how to space things out. I kept going back and forth with the staff like, “Here’s how to do these little comas. And I'm not a detailed person, even though I pay attention to those details of my work. So I think it's really essential for the process to be able to finalize something and be like, “Alright, this is where my poems were in the Fall of 2024, and this is how my poems are now.” I will choose to look at this and see my own growth as a writer. I think having an understanding of that will contribute to your growth as a writer.

E: So do you think that's been the most challenging part of writing for you, or has it been something else?

N: I think it is finalizing. I have a weird economy going on where I both don’t revise as much as I should and also make these micro edits that are way too intense. And those exist together in some space that I don't understand.  I think my process is very epiphanic. It just comes. And I write it down and I'm like, “All right, that's good.” And I definitely need to go back and edit more seriously. But then paradoxically I’m always tweaking things. So I think I’m not able to let go of minor edits, but then also not being able to kill my darlings enough that I rewrite whole works.

"little yellow legs looks up to the sky

& screams

the leaves are like a leopard /

mouth, wide-open

light is a glitter of teeth

green is a glitter of teeth"

Even river birds cry, Issue 58.1

E: So, who have been your biggest literary influencers?

N: It was a bunch of stuff that I discovered in Creative Writing: Poetry. I’m not paid by Klatt or anything, this is a huge ad.  I love that class so much One is Shane McCrae. He is a biracial man who was kidnapped by his white grandparents when he

was three years old, because they were white supremacists and they didn't want him to be raised by his Black father.  I mean, talk about life experiences not everyone has, you know?  He does all this super interesting stuff with rhythm and repetition, and typography. All my line spacing is straight from McCrae. I'm also a really big fan of Anne Sexton, who was writing at the same time as Sylvia Plath. I’d describe her as the unsettled housewife. She writes these weird, kind of schizophrenic poems that are really cutting. Both [McCrae and Sexton] write about religion in a way that I think is very rare and inspiring.  

E: Where do you see yourself going post graduation?

N: I want to get a PhD in creative writing. I just love reading books. I love school. So that was the natural career path for me. And then when I took this poetry class, I was oriented in that direction.  Obviously the dream would be teaching like a four-person seminar at NYU, but I’m also cool with teaching English 101 at a community college. I think that’s also really important work right now.  

E: So do you have any, like, parting words of wisdom for anyone who might read this?

N: I was thinking about this thought that I had last semester. I was thinking about some poems that I was going to turn in for Craft of Writing, and I was thinking about whether they were good enough or whether I was going to receive praise for them. And I just remember it hitting me that we worship a God whose words literally make reality, which is the ultimate goal of poetry. How amazing is it that he is also interested in what I have to say and what I have to write? You could think of it kind of like this little toddler who's dad is a master painter. And he buys his son some finger paints and the child’s sitting there scrambling colors on the kitchen table.  And then he runs to his dad and is like “Dad, look what I painted!” And his dad's like, "That's amazing."  And he pins it up on the fridge. I think the cool thing that shapes this community is that no matter what we think about each other's work or what we think about our own work, the King of the Universe has our art pinned up on the fridge. I’m reminded here of the words of Maurice Manning, who writes that God’s message to us all is “I made the world for singing. Now, you sing.” What a pleasure it is to follow that command together here at Dialogue.