Taking a Line Break with Andrew Kozma

Andrew Kozma’s poems appear in Strange Horizons, The Deadlands, and Rogue Agent, while his fiction appears in Apex, ergot., and Seize the Press. His first book of poems, City of Regret, won the Zone 3 Press First Book Award, and his second book, Orphanotrophia, was published in 2021 by Cobalt Press. You can find him on Bluesky @andrewkozma.net and visit his website at andrewkozma.net.

Andrew is the author of “Fleshmechs of the Current Age” from Issue 13.

His previous interview with Radon can be read here.

Q: Do you feel that you’re a different writer in 2026 compared to 2024 when we last spoke?

Yes, though I’m not sure I can quantify how. I’ve been focusing a lot more on fiction, which has changed my writing in terms of poetry, I think, focusing much more on those elements I see as poetic when I approach a poem. Leaning hard into image and disjunction. Letting the absurd exist along with the traumatic.

As a writer and a person, I’m trying to find a way to continue to be hopeful in the screaming face of the world at large. And I think that as a writer I’ve become more hopeful—or at least more open to hope in the endings of my stories, even if that hopefulness comes out simply as survival (instead of worrying about how we survive or what we end up surviving as).

Q: Was it a specific image or a specific line that came first for “Fleshmechs of the Current Age”?

As with many of my poems, it was the title that came first. I think it was partly thinking about how many of my poems aren’t speculative. I’m a speculative writer, mostly, but not in terms of poetry. Somehow that morphed into thinking about the term fleshmech, and how that’s basically what we are as humans, tiny consciousnesses running flesh machines, flesh robots, fleshmechs. Everything else followed from that.

Q: You’re known for excellent line breaks that catch a reader’s breath and change meanings as they continue. What advice to you have for poets struggling with choosing breaking points?

First, thank you for the compliment! It is weird to apparently be known for something. But to answer the question, I would say I focus on each line being a discrete unit as well as being part of a greater whole. I try to make sure each line can exist on its own as a thought or image, and I think my concern with that causes strange and unexpected twists in meaning.

I think I used to think about the primacy of the first word of a line vs. the last word. Over time I decided I prefer giving importance and weight to the last line, trying to never end on a throwaway word like “and,” and (it is inescapable) it does seem to me that the beginning of a line can absorb those kind of low-powered words easily, whereas the end of a line has to be, well, an end.

Q: What are some of the current trends you are seeing with authors? Is there advice or guidance that you find yourself giving consistently?

I’m not sure if this is a general trend, but advice I do give consistently is to be more specific and detailed. The more general a piece of writing is, the less interesting it is (in my opinion), if only because that means there is less of that writer’s individual viewpoint in the writing itself. (This is why using AI is also a trap, because it strips everything from the writer, putting only churned out generalities in place of their uniqueness.)

Q: Is there a specific moment, memory, or event that compelled you to write poetry?

I apologize in advance for my boring answer: I started writing as a freshman in high school because I went to an English magnet school where they required us to write everything: stories, plays, poetry, five-paragraph essays, research papers, even slideshow presentations. From that point onward, poetry was always something I was writing, though I think I was much more literal/plot-oriented in the beginning.

Q: Is there a certain line you have written that has stuck with you, and would you share it?

This is a hard one for me, because there are lines like that in almost every poem. But I’d like to share this one from an unpublished poem about the death of my cat.

What rough beast now slouches towards Heaven?

It’s my little black cat, a ghost made of ashes.

Though I think of all my poems as being personal, not many can be so clearly cut from the cloth of my life. A ghost made of ashes because she died while I was out of town, so I went from last seeing her body to having her cremated by the vet.

Q: Do you have any advice for younger writers looking to connect in the industry?

If there are magazines you like to read, reach out and see if they have Discords. That’ll give you a way to connect with other readers, who are also possibly writers. If you get published somewhere, same thing, as that’ll directly connect you to those who you share some aesthetic with. I would also try places like Absolute Write, and old-school message board where you can connect with industry people on both a personal level and through critiques.

Q: What is on the horizon for you that you’re excited about?

I am part of a writers’ collective called the Quotidian Unreal and we’ll be putting out our first collection of stories this fall. We all began with the same premise—a high school in another world—and each created something unique and horrifying and beautiful. So, you know, look out for that!

Q: Was there any music (1-3 songs) that you think would make a good mini-setlist for your poem? Either ones that may have been on your mind, or ones that give readers a good idea of the themes?

This’ll possibly be a weird collection.

girli – “I Don’t Like Myself”

Blood Cultures – “When the Night Calls”

Kae Tempest – “Europe is Lost”