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Tonee Mae Moll
Tonee Mae Moll holds a PhD in English from Morgan State University and an MFA in Creative Writing & Publishing Arts from the University of Baltimore. She is an assistant professor of English at a Maryland community college and teaches in MFA programs across the state. Her debut memoir, Out of Step, won a 2018 […]continue reading…
Can you tell me about the significance of You Cannot Save Here in your writing career and the importance of its newly reissued edition?
It’s exciting because it’s my first full collection of poems. So, my first full book was a memoir, but You Cannot Save Here was the book that helped establish, hey, I’m a poet, and I have a book of poems, and it won an award, and I know what I’m doing. It’s a creative portion of my PhD dissertation, so it’ll always have a special place there too. And then the re-release is huge. It’s hard to be a writer, and people would say, oh, I want to read your work, and then be like, oh, well, here are two books with someone else’s name on it that you should go read, but I promise that was, or at least used to be, me. So having my books with my name on it is huge for that reason. I can point to them and not feel weird about pointing to a dead name or pointing to a photo on the back cover that doesn’t look anything like me anymore.
What is a word or words that you think best encapsulates the feeling of your poems throughout You Cannot Save Here?
It is apocalyptic, so that’d be the first word. I’ve had friends who described it as hope punk, and I love that reading of it. But a friend and collaborator of mine, Tracy Dimond, called the work posy-goth, which we discussed is like, sort of epicurean. The world is ending, and the world is bad, and there’s no lying about that. But it’s also like, here’s what we can do despite that. That’s build together, that’s enjoy life, that’s pursue happiness and pleasure.
Several years after completing the book, how do you reflect on your poetry and who you were as a writer during that time?
You know, it’s interesting because it’s as much me and having transitioned as it is the world and how it’s changed, right? So, the book started with an obsession about climate disaster, but from starting writing to it being published, we also elected the 45th president. We also have the global pandemic. All these other disasters happened and have continued to happen. And so, in the years since I started writing, in the years since You Cannot Save Here first dropped, the world has changed. And then, of course, I’ve changed too. And so, what you’ll see in the book are some poems that reflect on gender dysphoria from someone who is really yet to fully figure it out. And lately, it’s from someone who knows she’s a woman and also is undergoing the painful, contentious process of medical transition. Then on top of that, I’ve experienced a divorce since then, and so I’m also just writing sad girl falling in and out of love poems, and a lot has changed, both with me and the world around me.
Has your inspiration and writing changed since you transitioned?
I think so. I think I’m more comfortable occupying this particular voice and particular inspirations. I think prior to transition, I had, and I probably should not have had, but I did have an anxiety about saying all my like inspirations are these 20th century feminist poets and feminist theorist folks, and I just like, I shouldn’t have done that, right? Like people who think their boys are allowed to cherish feminist writers and feminist thinkers, too. But I’m much less self-conscious about that now and acknowledging my influences and writing poems that reflect that too.
Why do you think people should read these poems and buy this collection right now?
Well, number one, I would like for people to just have my book. More specifically, I would like them to have my name on their shelf. The new edition is for that reason, but the poems themselves continue to be relevant. The poems continue to be relevant. We continue to live in them more than ever. I’m feeling the same energy I felt when I wrote this book, which is like, wow, these are disastrous times. These are devastating times. How am I supposed to go to work? How am I supposed to go on dates? How am I supposed to deal with the oncoming of spring, when my news feed looks the way it does? You know, when we’re worried about the lives of ourselves, our neighbors, and our comrades overseas, how am I supposed to just get on with life when things look the way they do? That is how I felt when I started the book. Thinking about climate disaster, how I felt about the election of the 45th president, how I felt about COVID when it hit us, how we just keep going? How do we find joy when the world looks the way it does, that in 2025 continues to feel relevant, maybe even more than it did then.
Do you have any advice for aspiring writers hoping to publish their work but are struggling to find themselves creatively?
Oh, what a lovely question, trying to find themselves creatively. I think the biggest thing I really believe is to write the work you want to write. Don’t think you have to write for a particular audience. Don’t think you have to write a particular voice. I was told early on if you’re chasing the trend, you are too late, right? If you don’t have something for the trend when it’s trending, you can’t chase it. So don’t try to write for what you think writing looks like now. And don’t try to write for some imagined audience that is sort of unpleaseable. Just write what you want to write. Write the weirdest stuff you want to write for the weirdos you want to read it, and your audience will find you, particularly in poetry, which can be so siloed anyway. Just pursue your weirdness and don’t worry about the marketing aspect of it.
Is there any question I didn’t ask you that you feel like I should have asked, or anything you just want to add?
I think the thing that I’d want to really emphasize is that I do think the book’s hopeful. When I was drafting this, one of my mentors was like, maybe this is great, but it’s pretty heavy, it’s pretty dark. And I went back to look at it, and it can be read that way. But the thing I told them, and I started rearranging the book in ways that tried to bring this out, is that it’s not just despair. The thing about writing an apocalypse is that there’s something that comes after. We would not write about the apocalypse if we didn’t believe there was someone on the other side of it reading the work. And so to think about apocalypse is to think about what comes after, and that makes it hopeful. There is hope in the work, and there’s hope in pursuing pleasure and poetry during just devastating times.
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Featured WWPH Publication You Cannot Save Here
A collection of poems about how we live when each day feels like the world is ending. The poems ask what we do with the small moments that matter when so much around us-climate disaster, gun violence, pandemics, wars-makes these days feel apocalyptic.continue reading…
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