Interviews

The delight of this work

Women of color celebrate second books

Gabrielle Civil
Rosamond S. King
Christina Olivares
Seema Reza
Purvi Shah
Clockwise from top left: Seema Reza, Gabrielle Civil, Christina Olivares, Rosamond S. King, Purvi Shah.

The inception of this work is relationship. 

Publishing is not pretty for women of color poets. Undue expectations. The need to speak on behalf of whole communities. Elusive second books. 

*a linked engagement with:
Future Botanic. Christina Olivares. Get Fresh Books, forthcoming 2022

May 16, 2022

Violent holidays in Russia

An interview with Kirill Medvedev

Kirill Medvedev
José Vergara
A screenshot from our interview with Kirill Medvedev.

Note: Kirill Medvedev’s brief, shocking “On the Day of My Thirty-Seventh Birthday” details what happens to a revolutionary who has just been involved in killing the president. After acting as a lookout and messenger during the assassination, he mistakenly shoots and kills a fan, whom he mistakes for the secret services but who simply wanted an autograph. Facing this revelation, the poet thinks to himself, “Shit … what a missfire. / A tragic missfire, a mistake, / which means the good-for-nothing president / is still alive.”[1] 

December 23, 2021

'Poetry is in the world'

Gillian Conoley and Christy Davids in conversation

Gillian Conoley
Christy Davids
An interview with Gillian Conoley and Christy Davids

Note: Gillian Conoley’s A Little More Red Sun on the Human: New and Selected Poems, with Nightboat Books, won the thirty-ninth annual Northern California Book Award in 2020. She received the 2017 Shelley Memorial Award for lifetime achievement from the Poetry Society of America and was also awarded the Jerome J. Shestack Poetry Prize, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, and a Fund for Poetry Award.

November 5, 2021

Zoning in, zoning out

A trialogue

Edgar Garcia
Jose-Luis Moctezuma
Rodrigo Toscano

Note: When I first met Edgar and Jose-Luis in Chicago some six years ago, and then again two years later, it seemed like we had known each other forever. Three nerdy, studious, politically minded Cali blokes far from home (they in Chicago, me in New Orleans) couldn’t talk fast enough to connect the dots between us historically, philosophically, politically, and poetically. And since meeting them, the range of accomplished publications they’ve both produced presented me with rich materials from which I felt I could engage them both — at the same time.

September 7, 2021

Dots in the distance

A dialogue with Mark Francis Johnson

Mark Francis Johnson
Michael Nardone
Photo of Michael Nardone (left) by Richmond Lam. Photo of Mark Francis Johnson (right) by Sarah DeGiorgis.

Note: Mark Francis Johnson’s work first absorbed me into its worlds at an event for Make Now Books in New York in 2015. He was there to launch his poet’s novel ​After Such Knowledge Park. His reading from the book was, as I remember it, immersive from its first moment. The narration begins in a shed of some kind, in a hinterland or interzone space, and inside the shed resides a recluse.

May 26, 2021