Contributor Interview: Daniela Buccilli

Daniela Buccilli's "Italian Shoes" appears in the Summer 2026 Issue of Broad Ripple Review.

What is your favorite punctuation and a literary hot take you have?

My hot take: Open up a fresh Poetry issue. Find your favorite poem in that  issue, reread it several times aloud, annotate it as an admirer of craft would; then use the poem as a model for a draft of your own. And here is the best part: find the poet's website and thank them. I just did so with Teresa Cabor. She wrote back!

My favorite punctuation: Ah, for years, my go-to answer to this often-considered question had been the em dash. (Yes, I've considered the question seriously for years.) But with the widespread use of AI bots, the em dash is now a potential sign of an AI-generated text that's trying too hard to be human-sounding. In the past, I would have said that the em dash was bold, confident, and not distracting. It was cool but only before AI; now it might have the stink of phonies. But when Bishop put one at the beginning of the first line of her last stanza to "One Art," nothing was ever the same. Bishop's move still feels revolutionary to me.

So now, my answer is the restrained and modest period. How gentle and firm, actually, sure of itself it is, never arrogant, more dependable and efficient. I'm crushing.

It is true that, unlike the comma, the period does close things off, but now forever. In fact, for a conversationalist, the period allows for real dialogue. Contrast it with, say the semicolon, that monopolizer of discourse. The semicolon is professorial, an old school lecturer. On the other hand, the period bows and offers you the floor. It asks, "And you, what do you say?" When the period plays on the field of a poem, it plays nice; it will let line breaks do their version of an "end." The period isn't showy, and it isn't fancy: it's honest. It has boundaries. It is clear. 

If we could go back to the em dash, for a moment, and remember the best employer of the dash —  Emily "Dash" Dickinson —  we need to remember that she wrote by hand and so her dashes have their own idiosyncrasies. Scholars do not agree if the marks are to be printed as em dashes or en dashes, not to mention how to read them. Did you know that some of her marks are vertical! 

Em dash or en dash, now that's a poet's question. Sure, there are rules and conventions; I've read most of the Robert Bringhurst book The Elements of Typographic Style (1992; 2015), the funniest typophile there ever was, but poets barely use crosswalks, why would we bother with the finickiness of even a witty style manual? I'm being a little disingenuous here, but what I'm saying is poets love the question not the answers. 

To conclude, haha! in the World Cup of American punctuation, I'm on Team Period, not Team Dot. "Dot" feels like the sophomores are taking over prom. Honorable mentions include the ampersand, the ellipsis and the comma. The comma is the powerhouse that never gets any credit; alas, commas are the middle seat in a dinner party: the facilitator of fine conversation. I can respect that.

What inspired you to write “Italian Shoes”?

The poem speaks about a sexual assault I survived at 13. As with others who experience violence, my memory of the event was full of sensory details that seemed fragmental or trivial, but when I wrote down the details in "Italian Shoes," I was able to see myself in the scene and begin to understand how young I was and that I was not to blame. If I don't see the reality of my life, the feelings in my body are unclear and manifest as some vague or generalized shame. Writing is one way to be honest to myself in a gentle way. Once I see reality with my adult mind, once I shape the chaos into line breaks, I can more easily grieve the girl that I was and also give her the support and respect she deserved. I've been a gutsy person all my life, but in my dark hours I forget. Writing the violence allows me to contain it in me so that I can put it in its rightful place in my larger life story. The poem wanted to make clear the violence, the relational interaction, and that I was not destroyed by the cruelty. If someone reads the poem and feels stronger than the hurt they carry, the poem has earned its space in the pages of Broad Ripple Review.

This poem is part of a larger manuscript about my relationship to my birth country and its history of fascism: Italy is beautiful but also the home of fascism. 

What’s a change in the writing or publishing industry that you have enjoyed this year?

I live in Pittsburgh, a poetry town: which means, there are poetry events nearly every day somewhere in the city. If you ask your barista, the Aldi's cashier, the bus driver, or even the security guard at your apartment complex chances are high they are either poets or friends of a poet. We have over 20 independent bookstores, Alphabet City, White Whale, City Books, to name just a few. And each of those have reading nights. It's a city of universities, at least four within walking distance of each other, and great MFA programs. There are far-reaching and legendary community writing workshops, the Madwomen in the Attic, to name the one I'm in. We have the Pittsburgh Review of Books online, and our city newspapers used to publish contemporary poems from local poets.

Maybe my favorite resource is The University of Pittsburgh Press. Every year, the Press publishes a batch of contemporary poetry books that have been consistently influential. 

Reading new poets elevates my own writing, inspires and opens my mind to possibilities. We also have the great publishers Autumn House Press and Lefty Blondie Press. The poetry world where I live is extensive but stable; which means if you stay long enough you meet the writers and editors at readings. The city is small enough to allow a person to know it and big enough never to be boring. Like elsewhere in our country, the humanities are undervalued here, but unlike some states, we have a democratic governor who does not want to remove the arts from the public sphere, at least that's how I see it.

This year I attended the Cave Canem celebration and the Ed Ochester memorial. Both events highlight the legacy of the poetry leaders who make American poetry vibrant and of the highest quality. Both events filled me with love. The publishing industry? It is sustained by those who love literature and know its enduring reach. Also, for some mysterious reason people keep writing, and some people read them: that's all I want.

I noticed that you are the poetry editor for Northern Appalachia Review. Is it hard being a publisher as someone who also understands the grueling submission process? Has the experience taught you more about submitting your own work?

I enjoy leading the Poetry team at NAR (Northern Appalachia Review). I know that sounds corporate, but I can't figure out how else to say it. I have three amazing readers: we get nearly 200 submissions a year, not large and not small either, but just about right for us and our region. The four of us have so much fun talking about the poems that come in. We read individually and then bring poems to discuss: we all write poetry ourselves and so are intimately acquainted with the doubts that poets have to fight to even send poems out. We all have been disappointed by journals and editors that didn't see our work as ready for publication so we read all submissions with great care and sensitivity.  

The experience of being an editor has encouraged me to send my work out with less angst. As an editor I sometimes come across modest writers who are amazing. The opposite also exists, but I don't want to follow their footprints.

There was a time when I would reach out to poets who had a submission that could have been stronger with small revisions. Sometimes reaching out to the poet with questions helps that poet see their work a little clearer, but sometimes, poets double down on their original version and we have to thank them and let that poem go. For better or worse, I've done less of that reaching out. I trust the submitters to be careful with their work, that they proofread it, and send their absolute best to us. The mission of NAR is to honor the complexity of our region and to eschew the reductive conclusions that some may have of Northern Appalachia. We are interested in craft, voice, and emotional honesty. 

I also saw that you have written a poetry chapbook. How would you say that process differs from summoning just a few poems for literary magazines submissions?

When I worked on the chapbook What It Takes to Carry (Main Street Rag), I had been writing for sixteen years. When I printed out my strongest work and lived with the papers on walls, on the mantlepiece, on the floor, a book started to look possible. Before the poems lived in virtual folders on my desktop, organized by dates, but when I put poems near each other, I thought I saw them connecting with each other.  As I heard others say, the poems "spoke to each other": they were in conversation. I wanted to get them off my desktop and in a binding so that when I read at local readings I had something to offer anyone who asked. Main Street Rag had published a few of my poetry friends and so I reached out to editor M. Scott Douglass. I was lucky that he saw something in the manuscript. I'm proud of the chapbook; I see myself in each of those poems. I hear my voice. I'm grateful for what they suggest about my introspection and connection with the world.

Now that “Italian Shoes” has wrapped up, what is next on the writing docket?

I have finished the full-length poetry manuscript A Fire to Follow in which "Italian Shoes" appears and am looking for a publisher. I have recently retired from a teaching job and so will be working on a new project called Consider Teaching that includes micro essays and poems about teaching in a public school in the era of anti-woke hysteria, COVID-19, AI, and the phone in the classroom. 

Do you have any advice for upcoming writers looking to get their work published?

If you want an audience, and I know I do, consider the poem's invitation to your reader. What space does the poem offer the reader? When I first wrote "Italian Shoes" I didn't consider the reader, but when I was sending it out I looked for room for the reader's own life and heart.  Sometimes not until the poem is published do I even see the poem's invitation. So, my advice is send out poetry not to get published necessarily but as an inquiry: which poems resonate. That's how publication can work for me: an editor can recognize the "space" in a poem that I didn't know was there until they felt it. Writing for yourself is one thing: writing for the other requires a good editor. 

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About the Author

Daniela Buccilli’s poetry has been published in The Pedestal, Prime Number, Quarter After Five, Paterson Literary Review, Cimarron Review. Her chapbook is "What it Takes to Carry" and her co-edited anthology is "Show Us Your Papers" (both from Main Street Rag). She is the poetry editor at Northern Appalachia Review.

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About the Interviewer

Ollie Sikes (they/them) is an evolving queer writer, editor, and creator based in Dallas, TX. They completed a double BA in Creative Writing and Theatre at Butler University. Besides volunteering with Broad Ripple Review, they also serve as Content Creator for the little things literary magazine. Their poetry has been published with Synchronized Chaos. You can follow them on Instagram @ollie.sikes.