Interviews

Piece these disjointed images together

Brandi George in conversation with Sandra Simonds

Brandi George, George's new book "The Nameless," and Sandra Simonds.
From left to right: Brandi George, George's new book "The Nameless," and Sandra Simonds.

This interview with Brandi George was conducted by Sandra Simonds via email and on Zoom on November 12, 2023. The two discuss George's latest book, The Nameless (Kernpunkt Press, 2023).

The Nameless: a memoir-in-verse (http://www.kernpunktpress.com/store/p38/nameless.html), is the winner of the Eyelands Book Award. Brandi’s work explores her struggle with mental illness, sexual assault, religious extremism, an exorcism, and the burning of her creative work when she was in her early teens. Through all of this, she has been guided and inspired by the power of poetry and artmaking.

Haun Saussy and Teresa Villa-Ignacio

Sounding Translation episode 3

Photo of Haun Saussy in Rwanda by Paul Farmer.

Bridget Ryan: Hi everyone! You’re listening to Sounding Translation, a podcast featuring interviews with translators of contemporary poetry. I’m Bridget Ryan, Stonehill Class of 2023, and the producer of this podcast episode. In this interview with Teresa Villa-Ignacio, Haun Saussy discusses the origins of his motivation to translate Francophone Haitian poetry, which was to give the American public a more well-rounded and positive outlook on the Haitian community during the 1980s and 1990s AIDS epidemic and refugee crisis. Saussy also discusses the value of Haitian culture and history as well as the poetic styles and literary influences that inspired the poets he has translated, which include René Bélance, René Depestre, and Jean Métellus.

Bridget Ryan: Hi everyone! You’re listening to Sounding Translation, a podcast featuring interviews with translators of contemporary poetry. I’m Bridget Ryan, Stonehill Class of 2023, and the producer of this podcast episode. In this interview with Teresa Villa-Ignacio, Haun Saussy discusses the origins of his motivation to translate Francophone Haitian poetry, which was to give the American public a more well-rounded and positive outlook on the Haitian community during the 1980s and 1990s AIDS epidemic and refugee crisis.

'So I continued, issue by issue'

Seth Perlow interviews 'Jacket' founder John Tranter

Graphics by John Tranter from early issues of ‘Jacket,’ adapted from ‘The Left Hand of Capitalism: … about Jacket magazine.’

Note: I conducted this interview with John Tranter via email on May 7, 2013, as research for an article I was writing. After I sent John my questions, he replied with a .txt file that contained my questions and his answers. I cited some of his comments in my article, “The Online Literary Magazine: Some Preliminary Responses,” Letteratura e Letterature 8 (2014), reprinted in The Routledge Companion to the British and North American Literary Magazine (2022). The “Left Hand” essay mentioned below refers to Tranter’s “The Left Hand of Capitalism: … about Jacket magazine” (1999). — Seth Perlow

Note: I conducted this interview with John Tranter via email on May 7, 2013, as research for an article I was writing. After I sent John my questions, he replied with a .txt file that contained my questions and his answers.

Vomiting gold in Arcadia

A conversation between Marty Cain and Joe Hall

Photo of Joe Hall (left) by Patrick Cray. Photo of Marty Cain (right) by Kina Viola.

Note: Joe Hall and Marty Cain met over the internet in the mid-2010s, and since then, they’ve corresponded, read each other’s work, swum in gorges, and played in a punk band, Joyous Shrub. Joe currently lives in Buffalo, New York, and Marty lives in Ithaca, New York (although Joe also once lived near Ithaca for a brief period). In this cointerview, they discuss their books — Marty Cain’s The Prelude (Action Books, 2023) and Joe Hall’s Fugue and Strike (Black Ocean, 2023) — and matters concerning locality, labor, and the relationship between art and political action, among other subjects.

Note: Joe Hall and Marty Cain met over the internet in the mid-2010s, and since then, they’ve corresponded, read each other’s work, swum in gorges, and played in a punk band, Joyous Shrub. Joe currently lives in Buffalo, New York, and Marty lives in Ithaca, New York (although Joe also once lived near Ithaca for a brief period).

Sarah Riggs and Teresa Villa-Ignacio

Sounding Translation episode 2

Photo of Sarah Riggs by Omar Berrada.

Bridget Ryan: Hi, everyone! You’re listening to Sounding Translation, a podcast featuring interviews with translators of contemporary poetry. I’m Bridget Ryan, Stonehill class of 2023, and the producer of this podcast episode. In the following interview, conducted by Teresa Villa-Ignacio, the poet, translator, filmmaker, and activist Sarah Riggs recalls how, upon moving to Paris in the early 2000s, she began translating French poets, including Isabelle Garron, Marie Borel, Etel Adnan, and Ryoko Sekiguchi.