Features
The MIDLVLMAG Interview with mk zariel
The MIDLVLMAG INTERVIEW is intended to provide insight into our contributors’ working backgrounds as well as their writing and thinking processes. Management hopes you will find it illuminating and inspiring. Literature matters. So do you.
mk zariel {it/its} is a nonbinary neuroqueer theater artist, Best of the Net and Monarch Award-nominated poet, movement journalist, and BashBack-aligned anarchist. it is fueled by folk-punk, Emma Goldman and existential dread. the author of VOIDGAZING (2026, Whittle Micropress), DIFFERENT WITH HIM (2026, Rockwood Press), and BOY APPARITION (2025, Vinegar Press), it can be found online at MKZARIEL.CARRD.CO, creating conflictual queer-anarchic spaces, writing columns for Asymptote and the Anarchist Review of Books, and being mildly feral in the Great Lakes region. it is kinda gay ngl.
After its poem “epistle for a work in progress” was published in MIDLVLMAG’s 8th issue, REVERSE EVALUATION, mk was named the Youth Poet Laureate of Madison, Wisconsin. We interviewed it to find out a little more about that process along with its writerly life. Some answers have been slightly condensed.
MIDLVLMAG: Who are you as a poet?
mk: I’m a poet for my community, not only a poet for existing literary or academic spaces. I first got interested in poetry when I learned it could be performed aloud. When I was eleven, I attended my first open mic at camp, and it kind of blew my mind. I realized that poetry didn’t just exist in school—it existed in spoken performance, on social media, in zine culture, in literary journals. As a poet, it’s so important to me to create work that’s accessible to everyone, particularly those who are queer and/or anarchist like I am. I love confessional “notes app” poetry, I love poetry spaces that are explicitly political, I love poetry by and for teenagers; I want to live in a world where nobody thinks they are too young, not smart enough, don’t have the right credentials, are too gay or trans, are in the wrong subcultural spaces, aren’t cool enough, etc. to write poetry.
MIDLVLMAG: Tell us about how you became the Youth Poet Laureate of Madison.
mk: The YPL application is open yearly for any teenager in Madison, and there’s a standard grant-style application (portfolio, CV, artist statement, rec letters). After that stage, I had to perform two poems aloud to the entire Madison Arts Commission, along with people in the audience who were also applying for another public arts program. That aspect was kind of nerve wracking. I was also in the middle of tech week backstage at a theater rehearsal, so I was run pretty ragged (and my Zoom setup was not ideal). I felt so sure that my combination of stage fright and pre-theater stress did me in—especially because the poem I read (“dispatch from the tourism board of a liminal space”) did not exactly paint an idyllic picture of Madison. I’d gotten the runner-up slot the year before, but still felt a bit freaked out. However, I eventually heard I’d gotten the position! I was so surprised by it and—once the shock had worn off—deeply honored and grateful to be able to represent and support the Madison literary community.
MIDLVLMAG: What is the worst job you’ve ever had?
mk: Out of all my freelance work, probably the worst experience I’ve had was my short-lived attempt at learning to use survey apps and “passive income” tools—it’s annoying to manage and doesn’t pay as well as poetry, which is saying something, because poetry isn’t known for paying well.
MIDLVLMAG: What would you do for a living if you could choose anything (and get paid for it)?
mk: I would of course choose to live in a world without capitalist labor. Failing that, I’d choose to read and write poetry and critical theory, perform and write for theater, and do anarchist organizing work. Which is, I suppose, what I currently do.
MIDLVLMAG: What is your greatest talent?
mk: How incredibly Type A I am. I use two calendars and a planner and have over 800 microtasks every day—but, I get a lot of shit done, so I suppose it works.
MIDLVLMAG: Google docs or Word docs?
mk: CryptPad docs.
MIDLVLMAG: What do you get out of reading?
mk: Existential validation, honestly. This especially happens with Symbolist and Decadent literature. This summer I read A Rebours, and every few sentences I was like “this is a perfect description of this really small part of the human condition. How come nobody told me this.” I also think reading helps me be a better organizer—I use anarchist theory in my day-to-day life all the time—and gives me a stronger identity as a queer person. Knowing where I come from—the lesbian pulp fiction, the Gay Liberation Front manifestos, the extremely trans-coded 1800s and 1900s novels (Monsieur Venus, Orlando, and all the rest)—make it feel that much more beautiful to be queer in this world.
MIDLVLMAG: Why do you write?
mk: Quite honestly, it feels as necessary as breathing for me. I’ve been reading and making up stories since my toddler years, and I wrote my first start to a novel (about a trans kid! and no, I had no idea I was trans!) when I was maybe six or eight years old. I’ve always used writing to process feelings, to build community, or sometimes just because I have an idea that’s desperate to come out.
MIDLVLMAG: What is your writing process?
mk: I typically start with a themed call—having parameters sometimes helps my creativity, which is the same reason I love workshop settings—and get a quick and dirty rough draft out. I mainly revise my poems by performing them aloud to myself. I’ve never been a fan of nitty-gritty, line-by-line revision tactics, but because my poems are always partially meant to be performed, I get a lot out of hearing how they sound.
MIDLVLMAG: What are you working on now?
mk: I have the film, audiobook and translation rights for my three chapbooks, so I’m trying to get some collaborations going around that. I also am working on placing my full-length collection DISPATCH FROM THE TOURISM BOARD OF A LIMINAL SPACE, that deals with how place shapes gender and identity.
MIDLVLMAG: Have you ever cried at work (and if so, why and where did you cry)?
mk: I cried in the mezzanine of the art gallery I interned at, right next to their shelf of poetry chapbooks by Midwestern authors, about my gender identity. It felt like a very fitting setting to have gender feelings, if an awkward one. (And yes, my assigned gender at birth is “Midwestern author.”)
MIDLVLMAG: What’s your favorite word, and why?
mk: A million-way tie between every word I don’t know yet. (I’m kidding, but also kind of not. I’ve been accused of “using big words” since I was little and find it incredibly freeing to be around people with bigger vocabularies.)
MIDLVLMAG: What does literature mean to you?
mk: When I was a kid and reading my first classic novels, my mother would often say that literature is the mind of the world—that when we read the novels and poems of the past, we can tell what people were thinking about and discussing, and how they used writing to communicate their beliefs and experiences. I suppose this is still how I see it; for me, writing has always been about building community.
MIDLVLMAG: What does it mean to be human?
mk: If I knew, I probably wouldn’t write or read so much poetry.
MIDLVLMAG: Favorite writer or work of literature?
mk: Emma Goldman. Anarchism and Other Essays was formative for me as a 13 year old. I loved the way she bridged the gap between political theory and an insistence on culture and art and beauty. The way she describes human flourishing under anarchism will always stick with me.
MIDLVLMAG: What’s one thing you wish you would have said to your least favorite boss?
mk: If we’re still talking about the accursed survey apps, I wish I’d told the good people at Eureka Surveys that they are crazy for making people think spending hours filling out forms is “passive income.” Because, like…it’s not very passive. But all of my bosses at all of my actual jobs have been awesome.
MIDLVLMAG: What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever received and put into practice?
mk: When I went to my first organizing meeting as a middle schooler—with the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America), because at the time I wasn’t cool—an older anarchist told me that the best way to get involved in organizing was just to email any theorist I read. I did that, and that was how I got my position at the Anarchist Review of Books and how I met my organizing mentor. The anarchist community has blown me away so many times; as a subculture, we tend to be generous and supportive by default, and so I give new organizers this advice too.
MIDLVLMAG: How did you find MIDLVLMAG and what made you want to submit to us?
mk: I found MIDLVLMAG through ChillSubs and wanted to submit because the focus on labor seemed aligned with my politics; I value lit mags that are not only open to my anarchist perspective, but explicitly make space for it.