Podcast Summary: New Books Network

Episode: David Martin, "nightstead" (Palimpsest Press, 2026)

Host: Holly Gattery
Guest: David Martin
Date: February 27, 2026

Episode Overview

This episode features poet David Martin discussing his fourth and most personal collection, nightstead. The book elegizes his younger brother, who died by suicide at age 23, balancing childhood nostalgia and immediate grief within inventive poetic forms. The conversation explores both the emotional impulses behind the work and the technical, formal strategies Martin used to shape difficult material into an artful, affecting memorial.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Origins and Motivations of nightstead

• Genesis of the Collection (02:09)
  • Martin reveals that the book emerged unconsciously: “I think I was working towards the subject without totally being aware that's what I was doing... It suddenly dawned on me that what I had been doing was kind of working back towards approaching this difficult subject and writing about it.”
    (David Martin, 02:09)
  • After a friend noticed a nostalgic return to childhood in his recent poems, Martin recognized he needed to shape an entire collection around his brother’s loss, not just address it in isolated pieces.

The Role and Power of Rhyme

• Technical Craft & Contemporary Rhyme (03:23)
  • Host Holly Gattery praises the poem "Charm," calling it "one of the best rhyming poems in contemporary poetry." She shares her skepticism about rhyme being “buttery smooth” to avoid cliché.
  • Martin discusses his evolution regarding rhyme, previously seeing it as outdated but now as a constraint that “forces your creativity and imagination into spaces you maybe wouldn't have had to have dealt with otherwise.”
    (David Martin, 04:26)
  • He credits poets like Alexandra Oliver and A.E. Stallings and references Stallings’ "Presto Manifesto": “By giving yourself the constraint of having to work with a constricted form or in rhyme or in meter, you force your creativity...” (David Martin, 04:45)

Dark Whimsy and Fairy Tale Undercurrents

• Thematic Tension (11:22)
  • Gattery coins the tone of the collection as “dark whimsy,” noting the mingling of magical childhood elements and an “undercurrent of threat.”
  • Martin confirms the intentional pull from folklore and childhood literature: “Those are often shared in childhood, but they can be very weird and leave you hanging...Am I just scared now?” (David Martin, 11:58)
  • Poems like "Fabulous," built on Aesop’s Fables, echo the book’s balancing act between the enchanting and the unsettling.

Structure: Questions and Memory

• Chanting Questions at the Bottom of Pages (13:06)
  • Gattery highlights the recurring “Do you remember...” questions as drawing both the brother and reader into shared reminiscence and loss.
  • Martin was inspired by Ian Williams’ Word Problems and wanted to pull readers along: “Even if you hit one of these weird fairytale folkloric poems...you're still kind of pulled along with these series of insistent questions on the bottom.”
    (David Martin, 14:12)
  • The lines were originally composed as a block and then distributed throughout, allowing “happy accidents” where they resonate with particular poems.

Writing About Loss Without Sentimentality

• Handling Grief in Poetry (19:38)
  • Gattery observes the book “unsettling in the best possible way,” comparing the poems’ indirect approach to grief with peripheral vision at a funeral.
  • Martin describes the challenge: “If the whole collection had that direct intensity on that one tragic moment, then maybe it would be too much...it’s only very, very recently that I could even talk about it.”
    (David Martin, 19:38)
  • He notes, “To face this and to write about it, to think deeply about it…without letting it turn into an abyss...Which is maybe what could have happened.”
    (David Martin, 21:27)

Poetic Sample: "Charm" and "Target Practice"

• Live Reading (23:21)
  • Martin reads “Charm,” displaying layered rhyme and dark fairy tale logic.
  • He also reads “Target Practice,” a poem with haunting understatement about childhood and a fleeting moment with his brother.

The Heart of the Book: "Hereafter"

• Processing Trauma Through Nonlinear Memory (25:21)
  • Gattery singles out the long poem “Hereafter” for its immersive, nonlinear portrayal of entering his brother’s living space after his death.
  • Martin reflects: “This poem is probably the heart of the book...When those memories do come flooding back, maybe all in one moment, it’s not in sort of a logical linear sequence...It's very jumbled.”
    (David Martin, 27:22)
  • Originally, the poem was a continuous block, but he divided it for “little breaks” and embedded subtle rhyme, to slow the writing and prevent “an unstoppable flow.”

Making Memory Artful, Reader-Engaged

• Presenting Complex Experience on the Page (32:43–40:22)
  • The host commends Martin’s ability to make the specific universal, reading a passage: “the weeks and months of silent dinners...the world has no time to stop for death.” (Holly Gattery, 31:25)
  • On poetic form, Martin highlights playing with the physical space of the page: “There’s the number of poems that use the page or the double page as sort of a field for experimentation and play...” (David Martin, 35:25)
  • Poems often require the reader to move eyes across or down the page, slowing the pace, paralleling the experience of recalling memory and encouraging presence.

The Art of Memory

• Balancing Past and Artifice (40:22)
  • Martin incorporates motifs from classical and medieval art of memory (e.g., memory palaces, wheels) to balance the personal with the universal and conceptual.
  • His guiding principle: “How to engage the reader, how to give them enough so they'll come along with me, but also leaving enough room for them, the reader to use their imagination...I don't want kind of an over determined sense of how you have to experience this book.”
    (David Martin, 40:22)

What’s Next for David Martin?

• Upcoming Projects (42:55)
  • A near-complete children’s poetry collection, illustrated and inspired by Dennis Lee’s Alligator Pie.
  • A new poetry manuscript titled Cheats: “about con artists and art forgers and thieves and pickpockets...how we feed and deceive ourselves with language and ideas.” (David Martin, 43:25)
  • Martin frames Cheats as a deliberate shift: “very much putting on the mask or the Persona of different people and different voices, maybe out of a sense that I've revealed too much in nightstead.” (David Martin, 44:00)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Evolution of Rhyme
  “Rhyme used to be kind of the magic embedded in the language, making poetry a kind of spell...By giving yourself the constraint of having to work with a constricted form or in rhyme or in meter, you force your creativity and imagination into spaces you maybe wouldn't have had to have dealt with otherwise.”
  — David Martin (04:26)

• On Crafting with Darkness and Play
  “Those running questions on the bottom...they're always sort of a 'do you remember?' kind of a chant to them. And it's implied that it's to my brother...but sometimes the question kind of happens to connect or resonate with an image in the poem. And so I kind of liked that the chance element in the placement of the questions ended up sometimes having these surprising connections with the poem.”
  — David Martin (14:12)

• On Grieving in Poetry
  “It was a challenge to...hold [the loss] in the periphery of my mind without letting it turn into an abyss. I guess that...which is maybe what could have happened.”
  — David Martin (21:27)

• On Memory’s Shape in Art
  “When those memories do come flooding back, maybe all in one moment, it’s not in sort of a logical linear sequence or a neat history. It’s very jumbled. And the poem even kind of talks about this...that's the way those emotions and memories came back to me and then kind of transferred to the construction of that poem.”
  — David Martin (27:22)

• On Poetic Form and Reader Involvement
  “I want the reader to read like the right side of the page and then hop to the left and they're kind of going back and forth...Often that physical placement can translate into temporal changes. If your eye just has to go a little bit further to find that next word, you're kind of given a natural pause...directing the flow of the reader and their experience.”
  — David Martin (35:25)

Important Timestamps

• 00:35 – Introduction and setup
• 01:35 – Why a whole collection, not just a poem?
• 04:26 – On rhyme, constraints, and language-play
• 11:22 – Discussion of “dark whimsy” and fairy-tale tones
• 14:12 – The chant of “do you remember” and experimental book structure
• 19:38 – Writing about suicide and grief without overwhelming sentiment
• 23:21 – Martin reads “Charm” and “Target Practice”
• 25:21 – Deep dive on the poem “Hereafter” and shaping nonlinear memory
• 32:43 – Universal resonance in grief poetry; form and play across the page
• 35:25 – On page layout as a field of play and meaning
• 40:22 – Classical art-of-memory and balancing personal/poetic artifice
• 42:55 – New projects: children’s poetry and a collection on deception

Themes & Takeaways

• nightstead artfully weaves childhood, grief, and memory, employing inventive formal play to evoke personal loss in ways that feel universal.
• The collection’s technical ingenuity (with rhyme, page layout, nonlinear sequencing) arises organically from, and deepens, the emotional terrain.
• Throughout, Martin emphasizes the unresolved, peripherally glimpsed nature of traumatic memory, and the importance of leaving space for the reader’s engagement and imagination.

For Listeners

This episode provides an intimate look at how a poet transforms unspeakable loss into a living, complex work of art—one that asks hard questions, invites presence, and lets poetry shape and hold collective, incommunicable experience.

End of Summary