Kaveh Akbar
Quick answer: Learn from Kaveh Akbar's craft: hunger-driven imagery, spiritual questioning, addiction and recovery as subject, plus the best entry points into his poetry.
Kaveh Akbar was born in Tehran in 1989 and raised in the United States, and he has become one of the most influential poet-citizens of his generation: a writer, teacher, editor and interviewer whose enthusiasm for other people's poems is nearly as famous as his own. His debut full collection, Calling a Wolf a Wolf, dealt frankly with alcoholism and recovery; Pilgrim Bell pushed further into prayer, doubt and the limits of language. His novel Martyr! became a bestseller in 2024.
Akbar is essential reading for any poet whose subject is appetite, faith or the struggle to say true things about the self. His craft signature is intensity managed through precision: wild images set in careful frames.
Who he is and why he matters
Akbar belongs to the Iranian diaspora and writes with a live connection to Persian devotional tradition while working fully inside contemporary American poetry. He founded the interview site Divedapper, where he spent years talking craft with working poets, and he edited The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse, a survey of sacred poetry across centuries and cultures. That editorial work is visible in his own poems, which treat prayer as a technology anyone can pick up and mishandle.
His recovery from addiction is not a biographical footnote but a poetics. The poems ask what a person does with enormous appetite once its first object is removed, and the honest answer, in his work, is: aim it at language and at the divine.
The signature moves
These techniques recur across both collections and are concrete enough to imitate.
What you can learn
Let your speaker be caught trying. A poem that admits its own doubt, revises itself mid-line, or confesses the vanity of its own beautiful phrase gains a credibility that polished certainty never earns. Draft a poem, then insert one moment where the speaker questions what they just said.
Practise the sacred-profane image pair: place one bodily, even unlovely detail beside one reverent gesture and refuse to explain the join. And study his restraint with white space. Silence in a poem is a formal choice with meaning, not a decoration. If you enter contests, remember that scorers reading for language and emotion respond to exactly this kind of controlled risk; Writory's judges see thousands of safe poems for every one that takes a real swing.
Where to start reading
Calling a Wolf a Wolf (2017) is the natural entry point, particularly its recovery poems. Pilgrim Bell (2021) is the more formally adventurous book and rewards slow reading. The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse (2022), which he edited, doubles as a map of his influences, and Martyr! (2024) shows the same obsessions carried into fiction.
What poets can take from this
- Let the speaker doubt or correct themselves once per poem; visible honesty builds trust.
- Pair one bodily detail with one sacred gesture and do not explain the join.
- Treat white space as breath and hesitation, not decoration.
- Write about appetite by tracking where it goes, not just what it wants.
- Read devotional poetry from older traditions to widen your register.
Try it yourself
Write a prayer from someone who is not sure anyone is listening, in which the speaker interrupts themselves twice to correct something they just claimed.
Questions
What is Kaveh Akbar known for?
He is known for poems about addiction, recovery and spiritual longing, notably in Calling a Wolf a Wolf and Pilgrim Bell. His 2024 novel Martyr! brought his work to a much wider audience.
Is Kaveh Akbar a religious poet?
He is a poet of religious questioning rather than settled belief. His work draws on Persian devotional tradition and wide reading in sacred verse, treating prayer and doubt as equally serious materials.
Which Kaveh Akbar book should a new reader start with?
Start with Calling a Wolf a Wolf (2017), his direct and widely loved debut collection. Move to Pilgrim Bell (2021) once you want the more fragmented, formally daring work.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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