To call the 2023 passing of award-winning lesbian poet, writer, and educator Maureen Seaton (who taught for years at University of Miami) an immeasurable loss is no exaggeration.

The recipient of numerous awards and honors, including two Lambda Literary Awards, Pushcart Prizes, and a National Endowment for the Arts Grant, among others, Seaton also made a name for herself via her collaborations with other poets, most notably Denise Duhamel (currently teaching at FIU). The posthumously published “Beautiful People”/”Tilt” (Bridwell Press, 2025) contains two books of collaborative poetry. “Tilt,” Seaton’s final collaboration with Duhamel, and “Beautiful People,” a collaboration with gay poet Aaron Smith. A fantastic and exhilarating poetry collection, it ranks among the best books of the year. I had the privilege of speaking with Smith about his experience of working with Seaton on the “Beautiful People” section of the book shortly after the book was published in the summer of 2025. 

As both you and Denise Duhamel verified by what you wrote in your introductions to the book “Beautiful People/Tilt,” everyone has an interesting story about how they met Maureen. Have you had a similar experience with other poets, or do you think this was a one-time thing?

I have never had an experience like this with another poet, and I doubt I will again. I think Maureen is why this experience was so special. She was a spectacular person. Her energy and joy were contagious. Her love of poetry and people and the world made me want to show up and write with her. We were becoming friends while (and through) making poems together.

Maureen was an educator, and you are too. Did you ever have a chance to see her in action in the classroom?

I saw Maureen in a Zoom classroom setting when I invited her to visit one of my undergraduate classes. I was teaching her book ”Furious Cooking,” and I reached out to see if she’d be willing to come. She said “yes” immediately. The students loved her. Her love of poetry practically made the screen glow. That’s really where she and I connected. After that class, we communicated how much we wanted to spend more time with each other, which ultimately led to the collaboration.

As an educator, do you think a collaboration such as yours and Maureen’s can also be utilized as a teaching tool?

I think it depends on the openness of the students. Collaboration is intimate, and you need to feel comfortable with your collaborator. There was an ease between us that made way for joy and experimentation. For students who don’t know each other, I could see some resistance.

Have you taught or are you planning to teach a collaboration workshop?

I don’t plan to teach collaboration, but I do plan to tell my students about it as a way of making. I think it’s something that will work better for them if they come to it naturally. The last thing I would want to do is make it feel like a group project, which students usually hate.

Do you feel like you got to know Maureen better by creating and collaborating with her than if you had interacted in a different setting?

Absolutely, we were learning about each other creatively and personally while writing. Writing poems together requires a certain amount of vulnerability. I don’t think you can be as open in most other settings to the degree we were while writing this book.  

Can you please say a few words about the distinctions in your writing styles and how they meshed in collaboration?

Her poems and my poems both think about queerness, popular culture, and how a body moves through the world. So, we had those commonalities. As far as differences, she was more interested in traditional forms and used a more playful diction than me. I have a tendency to be more direct, and I write mostly free verse. We ended up using the prose poem, or as Maureen called them “prose chunks,” while interspersing traditional forms and free verse throughout. The prose form gave us both room to bring ourselves to the project. Because of her, I wrote poems in traditional forms that I probably never would have. My first successful sonnet ever (“Sissy”) ended up being published in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day. I think we each pushed each other to experiment.

Does “Beautiful People” contain all your collaborations with Maureen, or are there some that didn’t make the cut?

The book contains nearly all of them. We do have four collaborative sonnets that we started writing after we finished the book. I didn’t put those in the book because they feel like a different project. They are being published by the literary journal Allium in Spring 2026.

How did you decide on the order of the poems?

We had one Zoom call where we read through the book together, and during that call, we thought about the order of the sections. I can’t remember all our reasoning, but we thought about tone, style, and surprise, trying to figure out what would make the most interesting book.

How do you imagine Maureen would feel about the finished book?

I think she would love it. I’m thrilled with how it turned out.

Are there other poets with whom you would like to collaborate?

It would be fun to collaborate with Denise. We now share a physical book. Maybe we should share some poems next.

What does it mean to you to share space in the book with Denise Duhamel, a poet with whom you have a history?

It’s amazing. Denise is the reason my first book got published. She chose it for publication in 2004 for the University of Pittsburgh’s Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize. I’ve now been with the Pitt Poetry Series for twenty years. In addition to Denise having a hand in my first book being published, I love her work and her as a person. She’s a poetry hero to me and so many other queers.

What can you tell the readers about the cover art?

Those are two paintings that I own by a gay British painter named Joshua Benmore. I love his work and own several of his pieces. He was referencing a Gucci fashion campaign. Denise and I like that there are three people between both covers, since there are three of us who wrote the book(s).

Have you started thinking about or working on your next solo book project?

I am working on another collaborative project with the poets David Trinidad and James Allen Hall about gay porn. I have also been writing some prose, which is new for me. I haven’t been writing a lot of solo poems, but they will come back. They always do.