Davy Knittle with Jill Magi

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In October 2020, Davy Knittle and Jill Magi spoke over Zoom about Magi’s book Speech (Nightboat Books, 2019). Their discussion moved through many aspects of the relationship between the city and the woven object, such as the intersection of textiles and architecture; how weaving, like walking, teaches us to live in communities; and walking, weaving, and poetry as fragmentary practices. They also discussed how language habits further spatial inequalities in cities, and poetry’s capacity to introduce questions about the language of climate change, citizenship versus belonging, and our understanding of value.

Jill Magi is a textile artist and poet whose books include SPEECH (Nightboat Books, 2019), LABOR (Nightboat Books, 2014), SLOT (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2011), Cadastral Map (Shearsman Books, 2011), Torchwood (Shearsman Books, 2008), and Threads (Futurepoem, 2007). Magi is currently a faculty member of NYU Abu Dhabi’s visual arts and creative writing programs. She has displayed work in solo and group exhibitions at Grey Noise, Tashkeel, and the NYU Abu Dhabi Project Space, among others, and is a founding member of the JARA Collective.

Davy Knittle (he/they) is visiting assistant professor of English at The College of New Jersey. In January 2022, he will begin as HMEI/Princeton Mellon Fellow in Architecture, Urbanism & the Environment. His critical work has appeared recently or is forthcoming in WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly, ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, and Planning Perspectives. From 2016–2021, he curated the City Planning Poetics talk and reading series at the Kelly Writers House at Penn. — Quinn Gruber