Akbar received a 2016 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from Poetry Foundation,[16][17] and in 2017, his poetry chapbook Portrait of the Alcoholic was published by Sibling Rivalry Press. Of it, the American poet Patricia Smith said: "Kaveh Akbar has written one of the best books of poetry I've ever read. Lyrical, seductive."[18]
A number of poets over the years have made alcoholism a major subject—Franz Wright, with his lacerating lines, comes to mind, as does John Berryman and his theatrical derangements. But few have written about this exchange I’m describing—spirituality for spirits, and vice versa—with as much beauty or generosity as Kaveh Akbar. His debut collection is about addiction and its particularities but also touches something larger and harder to point to, to talk about—existential emptiness and the ways substances often offer respite from our spiritual hunger.
The Times Literary Supplement wrote about it: "The work here is a measured, quiet pondering of intense subjects and subjectivities. But it would be erroneous to mistake this for lack of force. Akbar is simply interrogating his life and his place in the world with greater stillness."[31] A Ploughshares essay called the book "songs of collective personhood—the way our hearts could fit in each other’s chests."[32]The New Yorker poetry editor Kevin Young wrote that the collection's central poem "The Palace" "defamiliarizes language" and "recalls the epic mode, but also the ars poetica—the poem about making poetry."[33]
Akbar's debut novel, Martyr!, was published in 2024 by Alfred A. Knopf.[37] It received critical acclaim, became a New York Times bestseller, was named one of the paper's Best Books of the Year So Far,[38] won the Brooklyn Public Library Book Award, and has been shortlisted for the 2024 National Book Award, Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize, and the Barnes and Noble Discovery Prize.
The New Yorker applauded Martyr!: "Akbar’s writing has the musculature of poetry that can’t rely on narrative propulsion and so propels itself."[39]The Boston Globe wrote that it is "Stuffed with ideas, gorgeous images, and a surprising amount of humor."[40] Writing in The New York Times Book Review, Junot Diaz called it "incandescent" and its main character Cyrus Shams "an indelible protagonist, haunted, searching, utterly magnetic."[41]
There’s something immensely appealing about a meticulously written novel whose characters (Cyrus isn’t the only one) are busily searching for meaning. It’s a pleasure to read a book in which an obsession with the metaphysical, the spiritual, and the ethical is neither a joke nor an occasion for a sermon. And it’s cheering to see a first-time (or anytime) novelist go for the heavy stuff—family, death, love, addiction, art, history, poetry, redemption, sex, friendship, US-Iranian relations, God—and manage to make it engrossing, imaginative, and funny.
In 2022, Akbar edited The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse: 110 Poets on the Divine, released by Penguin Classics.[45] It collects poetry from many cultures, ancient and modern, ranging from Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome; to the Arab, Farsi, Hindi, and Urdu worlds; as well as the rest of Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. Selected poets include Enheduanna, Mirabai, Lucretius, Dante, Nazim Hikmet, and Gabriela Mistral. Akbar provides notes on individual poems. In a Times Literary Supplement review, Rowan Williams described the book as "poetry that detaches us from the world of instant gratification," calling it "A profoundly valuable collection, full of fresh perspective, and opening doors into all kinds of material that has been routinely neglected or patronized."[46]
When the Donald Trump administration announced its Muslim ban in 2017, Akbar compiled verses by poets from the countries and asked his followers to read them. The compilation garnered media coverage.[48][49]
In October 2024, Akbar signed an open letter pledging to boycott Israeli cultural institutions alongside over 5500 other authors.[50][51]
Akbar is in recovery and has written about his struggles with addiction.[53] In an interview with The Paris Review, he cites poetry as helping with his sobriety, saying, "Early in recovery, it was as if I'd wake up and ask, How do I not accidentally kill myself for the next hour? And poetry, more often than not, was the answer to that."[54]
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