This year, Heather Christle won the second annual Believer Poetry Award for The Trees The Trees, her second collection of poetry. Her third, What Is Amazing, contains poems with titles like “Moss Does Not Love Other Moss” and “People Are a Living Structure Like a Coral Reef,” so a discussion about titles seemed like a good thing to do.

–Daniel Handler

PART I

THE BELIEVER: Your poems have surprising titles. How do you go about titling a poem?

HEATHER CHRISTLE: I wait to title a poem until after I’ve written it, but only a few seconds after. That is to say, I do it very quickly and (I think) instinctively. I go on my nerve. It turns out, though, upon reflection, that my nerve likes titles that fall under certain categories. These are some I have noticed: titles that locate the action of the poem in a place, titles that sound like something the poem would have said before beginning itself or perhaps on a different occasion (if poems were allowed to move through time like people), titles that think their poem is a painting, titles that grab a few words from a phrase that someone else might utter near the poem, titles that pluck from the poem an idea to display first, titles that loudly state something obvious and true, whether in the context of the poem or otherwise (sometimes this just seems necessary), and titles that comment upon the situation into which the writer and/or reader have arrived (if writers and readers were allowed to move through time like people). Sometimes a title acts like a little hole through which you enter a poem. Sometimes the title blankets the poem entire. Titles are so various, like hats.

BLVR: Hmm, so in which category would you put, say, “That Air of Ruthlessness in Spring,” a poem which (for me at least) centers itself on the lines “I want to show you something / I don’t care what”?

HC: It centers itself on those lines for me, too. I think that title fits in two categories: first, it locates the action of the poem in time (a form of space), and, second, it comments upon the situation of writing a poem. I can get to feeling very ruthless when I am writing. And it is lovely and fertile and romantic, like spring, but, also like spring, it can make you feel you’ve just been in hibernation for months and are now capable of anything. Doesn’t matter what, just must be doing, must be making. Must be attracting mates and readers.

PART II

BLVR: Are there words to which you’re addicted? I’ve just realized how...