When I first encountered Joshua Nguyen’s work, I was struck not only by his precision and wit, but by the tenderness pulsing beneath each line. His poems move with both humor and ache, asking what it means to honor our small rituals—to clean, to cook, to remember—as radical acts of love. In this conversation, Joshua and I explore what it means to teach poetry as both method and mirror, as research into the self and the world.
From his classroom at Tufts, to his playful analogies drawn from Everything Everywhere All at Once, Joshua reframes form as a universe of its own—one where students are invited to bring their obsessions, their joy, and even their fear into the work. Together, we speak about ethics in vulnerability, the kernel of truth at the heart of revision, and how care becomes a pedagogical practice.
As a Vietnamese-American poet and educator, Joshua’s presence in the classroom is itself a quiet revolution. What unfolds here is a meditation on lineage and possibility—on how we can create spaces where every poem, and every student, is held with empathy, respect, and wonder.
Darius Phelps: In your Tufts classrooms, how do you frame poetry not just as a genre but as a method—an inquiry practice students can use to research identity, culture, and power? Could you walk me through a specific assignment or sequence where you guide students from reading into writing-as-research, and how you assess discovery rather than just “product”?
Joshua Nguyen: Where should I begin? My Intro to Poetry workshop is structured in three acts. The first act is foundational—how to read and talk about poetry in a workshop setting. The second act brings in more forms and formal techniques. The third act is the experimental one—once they know the rules, now they break them.
This past Thursday, I did one of my favorite assignments. I think I might have gotten [the index card part of it] it from Aimee Nezhukumatathil—her playfulness in the workshop really inspired me. I use the movie Everything Everywhere All at Once to help students think about nonce forms and hermit crab forms.
The first part is about nonce forms—those one-time-use forms with rules you create for a particular poem. Like, the duplex was once a nonce form before Jericho Brown wrote several of them, and now it’s part of our poetic vernacular.
I tell my students: each form is its own universe. It has its own rules, constraints, and familiarities. In Everything Everywhere All at Once, when you tap into a certain universe—say, the hot dog finger universe—you’re allowed to take some skills or inspiration from that universe into your base universe.
So I ask them to create their own nonce form inspired by a non-poetic thing—something from everyday life. The goal is to bring the language of poetry into their regular lexicon. One student on the fencing team wrote a form based on fencing, using three stanzas inspired by the three types of weapons. Another wrote a form around the idea that life is a simulation.
It’s a way for them to connect what they’re already thinking about to poetry, to create poetic rules around their obsessions. Then they write their rules on index cards. I shuffle them and redistribute, so each student must write a poem using someone else’s form—entering another person’s world through their rules.
My hope is that they learn they can bring their lives into poetry—not just through content, but through structure and mechanics.
DP: In Come Clean, “cleaning” becomes ritual, metaphor, and technology—part Marie Kondo, part pop music, part memory work. When you ask students to excavate their own archives, how do you scaffold that process so it’s ethically held—inviting vulnerability without demanding disclosure—and how do you teach revision as a second excavation?
JN: I like to open my workshops by talking about what students expect from poetry. Most say it’s 100% nonfiction—that everything in a poem is real. And I tell them it can be, but it doesn’t have to. If you’re not ready to write something directly from your life, maybe you can start with a kernel of truth. That’s something I got from Nezhukumatathil—the idea that a poem can hold a kernel of truth. Maybe it’s a fragment of memory, a mood, or the aftermath of an experience.
You can surround that kernel with other elements—with metaphor, surreal images, or invented details. It gives new angles to the same memory and protects what’s tender. When we revise, we talk about how to add zhuzh—metaphor, image, or sonic play—to serve the poem. Revision can excavate more poetic craft around that kernel of truth. It’s a way of working around pain, not forcing it out. That’s the ethical balance—writing as much of the pain as you want, and then focusing on the language that holds it.
DP: Across Come Clean, and in your chapbooks, I hear bodies, mothers, kitchens, labor, queerness. But there’s also equal parts tenderness and bite. How do these thematic preoccupations shape the community agreements and care practices in your workshop?
JN: I think about the spaces we occupy, the people we share them with—and even the distances between us. That distance can be part of care, too. In the workshop, I often talk about the page as a space. Even the caesura—the white space—is part of that space.
When it comes to subjects like bodies, kitchens, or mothers, I tell my students they can write about anything. Whatever they choose, they must hold that subject with respect. When you honor what you’re writing about—no matter how small or mundane—you show its humanity. I use Gwendolyn Brooks to illustrate this. She wrote about her community—people in domestic, everyday spaces. Her poems remind us that poetry can elevate ordinary lives and spaces we hold sacred.
In terms of community agreements, I tell my students to lead with empathy and possibility. When offering feedback, use speculative language: “What if you changed this word?” instead of “You should.” That opens the room to imagination instead of prescription. On the first day, I model this with a mock workshop. I pause and point out when someone leads with empathy—how disagreement can still be caring. It sets the tone for a space rooted in respect, curiosity, and care.
DP: As a Vietnamese-American poet and professor, your very presence in the classroom challenges long-standing narratives about who gets to teach poetry and define it. How does being seen, but also being mis-seen, shape your teaching practice?
JN: There was one semester where I had five or six Vietnamese students in a workshop. I asked how they’d heard about the class, and they said, “You’re one of the few Vietnamese professors here.” It struck me—just seeing my last name on the registrar made them curious enough to sign up.
They asked questions about how to write about identity, family, and culture—and I think they felt more comfortable bringing those questions to me. When I was younger, I majored in biochemistry. I didn’t take many literature courses. Later, I went to the University of Mississippi because Aimee was there, and I wanted to study with her. Having that comfort, presence, and mentorship meant a lot.
Now, I think about what it means for my students to see a Vietnamese man teaching poetry. I don’t take that lightly. Across both Tufts and Boston College, I hope they think: “That Asian guy is into writing. I can be into writing.” I feel lucky. I know there aren’t many who look like me who teach writing
Dr. Darius Phelps (he/him) is the author of My God’s Been Silent (Writ Large Press, 2026) and The Holy Ghost Lives In Her Laugh (Kith Books, 2026). A poet before anything else, his work bears witness to grief, faith, and the act of becoming—offering language as a form of liberation and light. Through the lens of poetic inquiry, Dr. Phelps explores how verse can function as pedagogy, healing and survival. Rooted in Black literary traditions and personal testimony, his poems navigate silence, ancestry, and resilience, creating sanctuaries for voices too often unheard. His work has been featured by Diode, Een Magazine, School Library Journal, and many more across platforms that champion the power of story to honor every body, every history, and every voice.
Joshua Nguyen is the author of Come Clean, winner of the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry, the Writers’ League of Texas Discovery Award, and the Mississippi Institute of Arts & Letters Poetry Award. He is also the author of the chapbooks American Lục Bát for My Mother and Hidden Labor & The Naked Body. He has received fellowships from Kundiman, The Kenyon Review, Tin House, Sundress Academy for the Arts, and the Vermont Studio Center. He is a humor editor for The Offing Mag and co-organizes Growing From Our Roots: An Asian Debut Author Showcase. He received his MFA/PhD from the University of Mississippi and currently teaches at Boston College and Tufts University. His second poetry collection, RIPPED, winner of the 2026 Four Lakes Prize in Poetry, is forthcoming from The University of Wisconsin Press.