Interview - Danielle Holian

With a poetic voice rooted in vulnerability, resilience, and emotional honesty, Danielle Holian has emerged as a writer unafraid to explore the complexities of heartbreak, trauma, mental health, healing, and self-discovery. Since releasing her debut collection Beautifully Chaotic in 2019, followed by The Dilemma in 2020, and Surviving You in 2021, Holian has continued to build a body of work that resonates deeply with readers through its raw intimacy and quiet hopefulness. Influenced by poets such as Sylvia Plath, Olivia Gatwood, and Rupi Kaur, her writing transforms deeply personal experiences into reflections on endurance, identity, and healing. Alongside her work as a poet, Holian also works within the music industry as a publicist and journalist, an experience that has shaped her appreciation for storytelling, lyrical expression, and emotional narrative across art forms. In this conversation with MeloDrift, she reflects on the experiences that shaped her creative voice, the emotional heart behind her latest collection Growing Pains, and the power of poetry to help people feel seen in their most difficult moments.

Welcome to MeloDrift. Can you tell us a little about your background as a poet?

Thanks for having me! I’ve been writing poetry for most of my life, but I began sharing my work more publicly in my late teens. My first collection, Beautifully Chaotic, was released in 2019, followed by The Dilemma in 2020 and Surviving You in 2021. Each book reflects a different stage of my personal and creative journey, and over time, my writing has become more reflective and intentional in how it explores themes like mental health, love, and healing. Alongside poetry, I also work in music as a publicist and journalist, which has had a big influence on how I think about storytelling, language, and emotion. Being around music and artists in that way has definitely shaped my creative voice and deepened my appreciation for lyrical expression across different forms.

If your life had a theme poem, what would it be and why?

I think my life’s theme poem would be less about perfection and more about endurance; something honest, raw, and ultimately hopeful. It would probably be a poem about rebuilding yourself after everything that tried to break you. My writing often returns to heartbreak, trauma, healing, self-worth, and the messy process of becoming whole again. I’ve always been drawn to poetry that transforms pain into understanding and reminds people they’re not alone in what they carry. Even in emotionally difficult chapters, I still want to believe in love, softness, and better days, and I think that’s the emotional rhythm running through both my life and my work.

Who or what has most influenced your poetic voice and style?

My poetic voice has been shaped just as much by lived experience as it has by other writers. A lot of my work comes from processing emotions and experiences around mental health, love, trauma, and self-discovery, and finding language for things that often feel difficult to articulate. I’m drawn to writing that is emotionally direct but still intentional, where simplicity can carry weight and silence can say just as much as detail. Over time, I’ve learned to trust my own way of expressing things, even when it doesn’t look like anything else I’ve read.

How have your life experiences shaped your writing, and what emotions or ideas do you hope readers connect with in your poetry?

My life experiences are the foundation of my writing, even when they’re not stated directly. Writing has always been a way for me to process and make sense of emotions that can feel overwhelming: things like mental health, heartbreak, trauma, love, and healing. It helps me turn those experiences into something structured, where I can understand them from a different perspective. When I write, I’m not trying to revisit pain for its own sake, but to explore what it means and how it shapes us. I hope readers connect with the honesty in that process, and maybe see parts of their own experiences reflected back at them. More than anything, I want my poetry to feel like a space where difficult emotions are acknowledged, but also understood and held with care.

Each stage of the writing journey—drafting, editing, compiling, and publishing—has its own rewards. Could you share a memorable moment from each?

Each stage of the writing process has felt meaningful in its own way. Drafting is often the most emotional stage for me; it’s where everything is most raw and unfiltered, and I can write without overthinking or holding back. Editing then becomes a quieter, more reflective process, where I start to step back and shape those emotions into something clearer and more intentional. Compiling a collection has been really special because it allows me to see individual pieces come together and notice themes I didn’t always realise were there while writing. It feels like understanding my own work from a new perspective. Publishing is probably the most surreal part. There’s a vulnerability in letting your work exist outside of you, but also a sense of pride in sharing something that once felt very personal with others.

Is there a poem of yours that holds particular personal significance? We’d love to hear the story or inspiration behind it.

One poem that holds particular personal significance for me is ‘The Monday I Returned’. I wrote it in the aftermath of leaving an abusive relationship, when I was still expected to function as normal while privately trying to piece myself back together. I didn’t take time off, and working from home made that disconnect even sharper; everything looked fine from the outside, but internally I was trying to survive the day in silence. The poem later shifted in meaning after my mother died, and that sense of repeated, contained endurance deepened into something like grief layered on grief. It stands out to me because it holds both moments at once: the attempt to carry on, and the quiet questioning of what that kind of endurance actually costs.

If you could spend a day in the life of any poet, past or present, who would it be and what would you do?

Sylvia Plath. I’d be curious to step into her world for a day and see how she moved through life and creativity, and how those two things intertwined for her. More than anything, I think I’d want to sit and talk with her about writing, emotion, and what it means to translate inner life onto the page. I imagine I’d leave that conversation feeling deeply inspired and more connected to the emotional honesty I try to bring into my own work.

Do you have a favourite poem that might surprise your readers?

A poem that might surprise readers as a favourite of mine is Olivia Gatwood’s 'Manic Pixie Dream Girl'. On the surface, it feels sharp, almost playful in its cultural critique, but what stays with me is how it gradually reveals the emotional cost of being shaped into someone else’s idea of “enough.” Lines like “let me build myself smaller than you” and “for a moment, I looked so human, the audience lost interest” stayed with me long before I fully understood why. I think I was drawn to it because it names something I hadn’t yet found language for at the time, that tension between being seen and being reduced, and it pushed me, early on, to resist shrinking myself in both life and in my writing.

Looking ahead, what goals or dreams do you have for your writing and literary career?

Looking ahead, I’d love to continue growing as a writer and expand into longer-form storytelling, particularly novel writing. While poetry will always be at the core of what I do, I’m really interested in exploring how my voice translates into more expansive narratives and character-driven work. More broadly, my goal is to keep evolving creatively and challenging myself with different forms of writing, while staying rooted in the same honesty and emotional depth that shape my poetry. I also hope to continue reaching new audiences and building meaningful connections through my work, whether that’s through books, spoken events, or future creative projects.

Finally, is there anything else you'd like to share with our readers about your new collection before we close?

I think the only thing I’d add is that Growing Pains is deeply personal, but I hope it also feels relatable in its emotions, even when the specific experiences aren’t shared by everyone. At its core, it’s about survival, self-realisation, and finding your way back to yourself. If it resonates with even one person and makes them feel less alone, that means everything to me.

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