What is Divedapper?

Glad you asked! It's a project devoted exclusively to featuring interviews with major voices in contemporary poetry. It has no affiliation with any institution, academic or literary or otherwise. All site content will be free forever to anyone with an internet connection.

Who are you?

Our names are Natalie Tombasco and Anthony Borruso, we are poets and college composition instructors living in Tampa, Florida. When we were MFA sproutlings at Butler University, we were introduced to this beautiful website and the thoughtful, accessible, and deeply intimate interviews that its creator, Kaveh Akbar, had posted here with many of our favorite poets. We will be carrying on these conversations with a new cohort of poets and checking back in on some familiar faces. Our hope is that these interviews will resonate with you just as Kaveh's did with us, giving you new ways to approach craft and explore the contours of language and experience. Alex Sperellis, designed the site you see before you, and Boyma-njor Fahnbulleh built it.

Pleased to meet you all. What's a divedapper?

It's a type of grebe (a duckish water bird) to which Shakespeare compares Adonis in his “Venus and Adonis” (“Upon this promise did he raise his chin, / Like a dive-dapper peering through a wave, / Who, being look'd on, ducks as quickly in”). Our tagline, "A Constellation of Poetic Phenomena," is both an accurate description of our content and a play on this.

How do you decide who to interview?

We solicit interviews with poets whose work we can (and usually already have) proudly proselytize(d). They might range from academic titans to small press instigators—the only qualification is that one or both of us are able to back the work and that they have published at least one full collection. We're interested in challenging any definition of poets & poetry, as well as speaking to poets at different stages of their careers. If the poet is amenable, we move forward. As a rule, we don't interview people who request to be interviewed—it's nothing personal, we just feel like it changes the dynamics of the kinds of conversations we aspire to have here.

Why are you doing this?

Kaveh: I want to be able to have meaningful conversations with the poets whose words have shaped the way I experience the world, and I want to share the artifacts of those conversations with as many people as possible.

Cool! Can I give you my money?

Absolutely—here's our online store.

When's your next interview coming out?

We aim to publish a new interview each fortnight.

All your interviews suck. Your questions suck. Your site sucks, you suck, and you should feel bad.

I sincerely invite you to make your own interview site and suck as much or as little as you please.

I have a question/comment/concern/ joy/rapture/sorrow to share with you. How do I get in touch?

Send all such queries to divedapperpoetry@gmail.com