An Interview with Daniel Umemezie

The 2026 Final Thursday Reading Series starts on January 29 at the Hearst Center for the Arts with a special event featuring the Cedar Valley Youth Poet Laureates, Lamya Pratchett (2024) and Daniel Umemezie (2025). Umemezie was also recently named the Midwest regional winner and will compete for the national title this spring. The Final Thursday Reading Series takes place at the Hearst Center for the Arts in Cedar Falls, Iowa. 

There will be an open mic at 7:00 p.m. (bring your best five minutes of original creative writing). The featured reading starts at 7:30, and it will also be simulcast on Zoom. Click to register for a link. 

Interview by Jim O’Loughlin. 

JIM O’LOUGHLIN: How did you start writing poetry?
DANIEL UMEMEZIE: I started spontaneously, really. I wrote a poem for a children’s day celebration when I was about 10 years old, and ever since then, I have written. Between the years, however, I had a hiatus from writing. This coincided with moving from Nigeria to America. And then I had a class with Michelle Rathe, and she convinced me to start writing again, and I owe a lot to her. The amount of growth I have had in the past years due to writing poetry has been nothing short of staggering, and I am constantly amazed at the way poetry impacts others around me, as well as the way my poetry has impacted people around me. I think it would be an understatement to say, "I am in love." 

JO: What stood out about your experience with the Iowa Youth Poet Laureate program?
DU: The biggest thing for me was the plethora of opportunities it brought and the chance to connect with other youth about poetry as a tool for change. I often encountered poets working in different modes, which complicated my understanding of how poetry operates formally and its many forms of impact on the world and society. 

JO: What tips do you have for writers who are just starting out?

DU: First, learn to cut everything you love that doesn't serve formal necessity. The hardest discipline isn't generating material, it's recognizing when your most compelling lines are decorative and when that beautiful metaphor is functioning as evasion rather than precision. Secondly, study formal constraints not as an exercise but as growing commitments. Don't adopt voice as persona or code-switching as decorative alternation between registers (some examples). Commit completely to what a given constraint reveals about the territory you are trying to explore. Read widely, not just to imitate techniques but to understand how formal innovation functions, noticing things like how structure enacts rather than describes meaning. Try to develop your own formal ideas before worrying too much about publication or audiences, and accept that your weakest work will come from inconsistency of execution, not lack of capability. The work will then be maintaining commitment when it would be easier to accommodate. Lastly, recognize that poetry isn't just self-expression; it's a world, a reality. Write realities into existence, and don't forget to have fun and play. 

JO: What hopes or plans do you have for the future (as a writer or in general)?
DU: I’ll always write, in some shape or form. But I want to major in aerospace engineering and minor in creative writing, continuing to write poetry, and eventually writing a poetry book and a memoir, maybe.