Michael Faudet
Quick answer: A craft guide to Michael Faudet: whimsical romantic miniatures, prose poems and playful eroticism, with practice advice and where to start with his books.
Michael Faudet is a pseudonymous poet, based in New Zealand and the longtime partner of the poet Lang Leav, whose collections of romantic and erotic miniatures have sold internationally since Dirty Pretty Things appeared in 2016. Like several poets of the social media era, he built an audience online first and let the books follow.
His work blends short lyric poems, one-line aphorisms and small prose pieces, usually about desire, distance and mischief. The register is lighter than most of his contemporaries: playful where others are earnest, arch where others confess. That tonal choice is itself the craft lesson, since managing lightness without slipping into triviality takes more control than it appears to.
Who he is
Faudet writes under a pen name and keeps personal details vague, letting the whimsical persona in the poems stand in for biography. His books, including Dirty Pretty Things, Bitter Sweet Love, Smoke & Mirrors, Winter of Summers and Cult of Two, follow a consistent format: short pieces, generous white space, titles doing quiet work above miniature texts.
He belongs to the pop-romantic strand of contemporary verse, descended less from the academy than from the love note, the postcard and the fairytale. The erotic content is frank but framed with wit, which keeps the books closer to flirtation than to confession.
The signature moves
Four devices show up across all his collections.
What you can learn
Study the unfinished story. Write a three-sentence prose piece that behaves like the first paragraph of a novel, then stop. What the reader invents afterwards is your accomplice; leaving room for it is a deliberate skill, not laziness. This teaches restraint that transfers directly to longer poems, where over-explaining is the commonest fault an editor or judge encounters.
Practise tonal control through props. Take one desire-driven draft and re-dress it twice: once with fairytale imagery, once with domestic imagery. Watch the temperature change while the content stays constant. And spend real time on titles; for any poem under fifty words, the title is doing a third of the work, so audition five before you keep one.
Where to start reading
Dirty Pretty Things (2016) is the signature book and the right entry point. Smoke & Mirrors and Winter of Summers continue the mode with more melancholy shading, while Cult of Two centres a single love story. Reading him alongside Lang Leav, with whom his work is often paired, shows two adjacent but distinct registers of pop-romantic verse.
What poets can take from this
- Write prose miniatures that behave like a story's first paragraph, then stop.
- Control tone by changing props: the same desire reads differently in fairytale or kitchen.
- End small pieces on a reversal, using joke mechanics for romantic effect.
- Audition five titles for any poem under fifty words.
- Let the reader finish the scene; over-explaining kills miniatures fastest.
Try it yourself
Write a three-sentence prose poem about a message someone almost sent. Give it a title naming a month and a city, and end on a turn the first sentence did not predict.
Questions
Who is Michael Faudet?
Michael Faudet is the pen name of a poet based in New Zealand, known for playful romantic and erotic miniatures. He is the partner of poet Lang Leav, and his best-known book is Dirty Pretty Things (2016).
What style does Michael Faudet write in?
He mixes short lyric poems, aphorisms and tiny prose pieces about love and desire, marked by whimsy, fairytale imagery and punchline endings.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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