Interviews - April 2012

Unrehearsed chemicals

A conversation between Joshua Marie Wilkinson and Rosa Alcalá

Joshua Marie Wilkinson: I know that there are a number of manuscripts — half-finished? completed and shelved? — which predate your first book Undocumentaries. What was the evolution of your first book? How many years went into it and how did it develop?

Rosa Alcalá: My first manuscript was my MFA thesis. When I was at Brown, my work started changing, so the thesis poems range from very traditional lyric poems to more experimental ones. Because I learned English shortly after Spanish, and because I’ve always moved between the two, I’ve always been struck by the materiality and aural qualities of language.

Parsing arias

A dialogue through 'abu ghraib arias'

Note: This email correspondence/dialogue elicited by the abu ghraib arias between Iraq War veteran and poet Micah Cavaleri and poet and peace activist Philip Metres took place between June and September 2011. The conversation ranges from poetic analysis of particular poems of the arias to asking larger questions regarding ethics in wartime, in light of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal of 2004.