Interview with Margaret R. Akchin:

Hi Margaret! How did you first become interested in poetry?

I've been reading poetry for as long as I can remember, but when I wrote, it was always fiction. Around last February, I started exploring the poem format. It was, of course, horrible garbage when I started, but I've practiced and read a lot since then.

Your poem “Emilia Viviani” is featured in Issue 6 of Eterna Journal. This is a highly reflective poem that references Epipsychidion. Could you provide some background on Epipsychidion for readers who may not be familiar with the original work? How important do you think that context is to understanding “Emilia Viviani”?

Epipsychidion is a lengthy poem by the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, more commonly known these days as “Mary Shelley’s husband.” He wrote it toward the end of his life and published it under a pseudonym in the early 1800s. The idea is that he was idolizing his new and temporary muse, the real-life Emilia Viviani, who was a nineteen-year-old Italian woman whose parents forced her to stay in a convent until she married.

I think this context is very important to understanding “Emilia Viviani.” A reader needs to know the characters, since the poem starts in medias res—in the middle of things.

What was your thinking and writing process for “Emilia Viviani”? What inspired you to write this piece?

When I first had the idea for “Emilia Viviani,” I was reading two works simultaneously, which complemented each other and formed together inextricably in my mind. One was Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Epipsychidion. With most poetry of that era, it's best to read it with as little context as possible, because the sweetest, most beautiful love poems can be ruined for you if you know too much background information. But I was interested, and I went into it knowing the basic facts of who Emilia was and why he was writing it.

The other book I was reading was The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. There’s a scene toward the end of the novel that I find poignant and that inspired me. Dorian, the ageless antihero, has decided for purely selfish reasons that he will become “good.” The first thing he does is abandon his current girlfriend, Hetty Merton, resolving to “leave her as flower-like as he had found her.” Hetty, unsurprisingly, is heartbroken, and I was reminded of Emilia, my beautiful, neglected heroine: no matter how much he believed his desertion was justified, it wasn’t.

Since I am a person who loves debate, I began thinking about both sides of the argument and wrote a poem-letter from Shelley to Emilia, explaining his flawed logic.

Could you discuss how some of the literary devices—metaphor, imagery, and others—in the poem contribute to its overall message?

In Epipsychidion, there are a lot of sun and moon references—the moon representing Mary; the sun, Emilia, or in some cases, his sister-in-law Claire—and I was very deliberate about using that imagery in “Emilia Viviani.”

I have nothing remotely close to Shelley’s astounding talent, so I invite readers to read the original text and hope only that my poem serves as a gateway. I also used the letter format with the typical nineteenth-century sign-off, “Yours, &c.”

The “hermit crab poem,” using a container or borrowed form, is something I also tried in “Wound Catalog,” where I use the form of a medical report or an autopsy.

Is there anything about this poem that you wish readers would pay closer attention to?

I wish more readers would understand this: the narrator is not all-knowing. This applies to most of my poems, and most poems in general. The narrator is not all-knowing. I know that as a reader, I like to be able to trust the narrator, to know that the narrator or speaker is being honest, but that's not how it works in real life. Just because the speaker, Shelley in this case, believes he is doing the right thing doesn’t mean he actually is. In that way, I think of “Emilia Viviani” as very postmodern.

What do you hope readers take away from “Emilia Viviani”?

I hope readers take away a) narrators are only humans, and b) that talent doesn't excuse actions.

Another important poem that I read around the time I was composing “Emilia Viviani” is Galway Kinnell’s contemporary poem “Shelley,” which covers different themes through an adjacent topic. In Kinnell’s poem, he lays bare the appalling details of Shelley’s life, then concludes, “And all that time I thought I was following Shelley / Who thought he was following radiant desire.”

It’s an important message: these aren’t just ideas. There are real people harmed by them.

The theme for Eterna Journal Issue 6 is “Echoes.” What kinds of subjects or ideas do you find yourself returning to most often in your writing?

I think I often return to the idea of hindsight, of how people will view your story in six months, ten years, or a century. I also love the theme of obsession. “I've always been fascinated,” as I said once in a currently unpublished poem, “by the degradation of things.” I link obsession and degradation together in the idea of loving someone so much you almost become them. These are my favorite themes.

Do you have a favorite piece you have written so far? What makes it especially meaningful to you?

When it comes to my own work, I have fairly good premonitions: the pieces that are published are often the ones I liked the most. “Emilia Viviani” might be my favorite, or it might be “First & Last,” which will appear by the end of September 2026 in The Bokeh Review.

Are there any poets, writers, or works that have had a particularly strong influence on your writing? Why?

I certainly have favorite authors, and just like every other writer, I started by copying those authors. When I was seven, it was fairy tales. Now it’s more likely to be whatever I’m currently reading. Right now, I’m most influenced by Thomas Wolfe, Jane Austen, and T. S. Eliot, but that changes daily. The authors I really, really love make me depressed when I think about my own failures. Then I quit marinating in self-pity and go write.

Based on your experience, what advice would you give to other emerging poets and writers?

Everyone says, “Keep writing,” so I’m not going to say that. You’ve heard it a million times already. From my experience, I think the most important advice is what they tell you on Duotrope: be professional, be patient, and be persistent. Professionalism helped me. Just because I’m a teenager doesn’t mean I have to tell everyone I’m a teenager. I’m thirteen. But it doesn’t say that in my bio.

Another practical suggestion is to start with contests and magazines that have quick response times. The first magazine I ever sent to never, ever replied. I learned that lesson the hard way.

Is there anything else you would like to share about “Emilia Viviani,” your other pieces, or yourself?

I often wish that authors would tell me what their personal favorite lines were, so here are some of my own:

“I’m beginning to believe that / love doesn’t exist // in a pure form. Or if it does / it is an expression of the divine / that we splice onto the material…” from “Emilia Viviani.”

“Her lungs were saturated with Lethe-water, miraculously still pulling in / oxygen,” from “Wound Catalog” (Rivener Literary, 2026).

And I also like: “Just 1,087 pages of attempts / to sum up what cannot be, what refuses to be. / and entry upon entry of split infinity compressed like a tesseract,” from “First & Last.”

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Editor’s Comments: Margaret offered a thoughtful look into the literary influences, questions, and ideas that shape her work. She extends her reflections on obsession, imagination, and idealization. Her interview left me thinking a lot about perspective, that the narrator can warp perceptions, guiding us to believe about a particular version of the person and story. These flawed narrations also reflect their psychology, insecurity, and what they choose to conceal. In the end, it is still up to us as readers to decide what we believe. Margaret’s complex responses, including constant literary connections, reveal a writer who reads widely, thinks critically, and write with both curiosity and intention. We are grateful to feature her work in Issue 6, Echoes, and to share more of the thinking behind the poem with our readers.