PhotoBook Magazine had the opportunity to interview poet Diana Arnold about her latest work, writing process, and inspiration. Her writing examines her experiences while allowing readers to discover new facets of themselves.

Diana Arnold is the best waitress in New York. Or she was. After working for over 15 years, six days a week at some of Manhattan’s most celebrated restaurants, including Dirt Candy, Momofuku Ssäm Bar, and more recently the opening team in the West Village’s premiere trattoria Via Carota, Ms. Arnold is now on the menu as a full-time poet and performer.

Arnold has just released her first poetry collection, If / When, published by the independent literary press, Kelsay Books. This book features over 50 poems which “distill those small moments of clarity when you begin to go from if to when.”

What initially sparked you to take the leap to being a professional poet from being a professional server?
I had been writing little poems in my head and on credit card receipt paper during my shifts for years. Writing at 2 am because my mind was so alive after a night of work… And when I got fired from my serving job, the poems just started to pour out of me.

What are some common misconceptions about poets or poetry you’ve encountered while on your journey?
Hmm, I don’t know. I find New York City to be such a wonderful place to be a poet.

Who or what influences your poetry?
This city. New York City has been the most influential character in my whole life. It’s the backbone of almost every poem I’ve ever written. I love the poets who lived here and wrote here, like Frank O’Hara and Eileen Myles. And I also love the steam, and the strangers, and subway cars – I’ve recited so many poems to myself on those platforms as the train comes in so no one can hear. I think my poetry comes when my sense of hope gets poked.

Do you consider yourself a feminist, and how is it reflected in your work?
Are there women who are not feminists? I have no idea. I can’t keep up. Yes, these poems are born out of the divine feminine –

What would be your number one piece of advice for someone who wants to begin creating poetry but doesn’t know where to begin or for someone who has writer's block?
Everyone has poetry within them. We can just get in our own way sometimes. My advice is to believe. Believe in the power that comes from bringing something out from your head, down through your heart, out from your hands, and into the world.

Do you consider yourself more of a wordsmith or a storyteller?
Poetry lets you do both, I think. For me, the rhythm of my words comes in exact tandem with its content – I can’t separate the two in my work right now.

Give us a glimpse of your day-to-day life and how it influences your writing and editing process and how long does it take to complete a poem and how do you know it’s completed?|
I write fast. And often without a pen or paper, just out loud through repetition. The poems really do sort of come to me, almost fully formed. And my work is to make some movement within myself to allow them to come out… I’m not sure you ever really know when a poem is done. I’m constantly changing something with each reading and revisiting. I don’t write so well when the sun is out, but I definitely do need a space where I can speak out loud as I write. It’s important in my process for me to say what I feel in the poem as it is being formed.

Are there any future plans in the works? What have you been working on lately or looking forward to?
I’ve been really enjoying our IF/WHEN live shows! Ryan Manchester is a local musician, and he’s been accompanying my poems with his music, and it’s been making the work come alive in a completely new way – which, as a writer and performer, is a tremendous gift! So that’s been fun! We have a show coming up at Rockwood Music Hall. Just follow me on Instagram for upcoming shoes.

And I’m also working on a non-fiction book about my years as a waitress. It will draw from my short film On the Table, which is currently streaming on Indieflix and explores all the do’s and don’ts and specials and allergies and regulars and firings that make up a career in the front of the house.

What do you think is the most important element of a good poem?
The truth. The truth of the moment it was written in.

To what extent has being a poet influenced the way you view the world and vice versa?
Poetry has saved my life. It has given me a place to put down what I feel when there was nowhere else to do.

Poetry is how I see the world. How I see the interconnectedness of all things; I write a line, you write a line – we make a living poem, or make a life, together.

I have seen a lot in this life – and my poems for me have been like time capsules. It happened. It happened this way, at this time – and that came out of me, onto you, maybe. It’s like I say in my poem Capture the Flag from my book IF/WHEN:

“It’s just so important to

write things down

before tomorrow comes,

because when it does

everything might be different.

But at least I have

yesterday’s record of it

When it wasn’t.”

“Restaurants saved my life,” she says. “I moved to New York the day after I graduated high school with 300 dollars in my pocket and the next day I got a job at a restaurant.” This year marks 20 years in New York for Diana. “But my writer self, performer self, and restaurant self were always a tandem thing. I kept thinking through every shift – write about it, write about it, write about it.”

She grew up in Beverly Hills which she says “was just not the right place for me.” Sensing a need to escape the West Coast, Arnold auditioned for the acting program at NYU. Never having acted before, she took the bus there, did a monologue from Romeo and Juliet, and got in. What followed was an intertwined narrative of service and performance, each informing the other. College professors and restaurant owners alike would recognize Arnold’s immense presence and power, behind the scenes and at the table, but perhaps also its unsustainability when tethered for too long to someone else’s dream. Their dream. After two years, Arnold bounced from the uninspiring NYU to the New School, where she graduated with a focus on poetry. “I’ve been everybody’s waitress,” she says. “It’s the only job I’ve ever had. I’m the last waitress who loves it. With serving, I finally got a seat at the table.”

Many of Arnold’s loyal customers and guests in the various restaurants, from major celebrities to west village regulars, would turn up at her various performances, like her 2010 one-woman show, 86’d, which ran as part of the United Solo Theatre Festival. For years, Arnold was a one-woman force, in her art, on the service floor, and in fleeting relationships. In early 2017, Arnold, full of steam, had begun producing and performing an ongoing show that would end up on the mainstage at Downtown Manhattan’s Dixon Place. This was On the Table, directed by Ken Barnett. At roughly this same time, while working at Via Carota, head chef, owner, and life-changing mentor Jody Williams, using a simple snafu over porcini mushrooms as a good-enough excuse, told Diana, “You’re bigger than this.” Diana says of that 2017 moment - “I had to get pushed off the cliff.”

It was then that Arnold began to work intensely on her writing. “A thousand poems just poured out of me.” She also has begun a memoir book project on her life in restaurants entitled, “How I Met a Million People,” as well as is putting together a TV pilot called “Waitresses,” which would bring together four separate NYC human “industry” stories a la Girls. “That time was a major shift for me. I began to see restaurants for more than just what they were to me” She has her first article forthcoming for Eater, and currently you can find the short film adaptation of her original play On The Table now streaming on Indieflix, directed by her partner Nick Canfield.

She is proud of all her projects and loves seeing them all bloom together. “It’s like throwing pasta on the wall and seeing what sticks.” But, you can see the publication of her book of poetry makes her shine the most. “I’m so proud of this book. It’s wonderful to have all these poems down, like little time capsules…” If / When, is inspired, and edited by, her partner Nick. “I met him after I’d been fired from Via Carota. Restaurants were taking up so much of my time and space – being forced to leave it helped bring in other things” she beams, relaxed, optimistic, and out of the weeds. She was single for 16 years. “Why wouldn’t I be? I worked every night, and refused to date a bartender.” Her humor is dry and comes quick, reminiscent of a slightly different time.

Diana quietly dreamed her little dream over and over in between taking your order and dropping the check. And that’s what the poems in If / When are about: believing in the life you want, knowing it’s possible. “Turning inward, using your gifts on yourself, and connecting with others. These poems are my offering now, my next step in being in service.” When she speaks, you feel she’s earned it.

Diana Arnold is a poet, writer, and playwright based out of Brooklyn, NY. Starting her career as a waitress, Arnold quickly discovered that her purpose was affiliated with literary arts. Arnold is currently performing her poems from IF/WHEN paired with music as part of a live series.

—-------------------

Bookstores Available in Brooklyn, NY, and online:

BOOKS ARE MAGIC

Unnameable Books

AMAZON

Tearsheets by Summer Safi, Contributor, PhotoBook Magazine