Previous Episode: Episode 30: Sarah Vap

Rachel Zucker talks with poet, editor/publisher and professor, Carmen Gimenez Smith, about the intersection of the lyric and the spoken word, the long poem, punctuation, working on several books at once, Cantomundo, Carmen’s writing process, writing long poems, being an editor, working with editors as a creator, the imagined or intended audience, the importance of getting feedback, political charge, the politicization of the bodies of women and people of color, Carmen’s mother and father, poetry as a form of recuperation, destabilizing the lyric “I”, writing about adolescents, Trump, “self-help” books, privilege, and the gift of entitlement.

Rachel Zucker talks with poet, editor/publisher and professor, Carmen Gimenez Smith, about the intersection of the lyric and the spoken word, the long poem, punctuation, working on several books at once, Cantomundo, Carmen’s writing process, writing long poems, being an editor, working with editors as a creator, the imagined or intended audience, the importance of getting feedback, political charge, the politicization of the bodies of women and people of color, Carmen’s mother and father, poetry as a form of recuperation, destabilizing the lyric “I”, writing about adolescents, Trump, “self-help” books, privilege, and the gift of entitlement.

EXTRA RESOURCES FOR EPISODE 31Books by Carmen Giménez Smith

Milk and Filth (University of Arizona Press, 2013)

Goodbye, Flicker (University of Massachusetts Press, 2012)

The City She Was (Center for Literary Publishing, 2011)

Bring Down the Little Birds: On Mothering, Art, Work, and Everything Else (University of Arizona Press, 2010)

Odalisque in Pieces (University of Arizona Press, 2009)

Other writers, poems and artists mentioned in the episode

The Book of Questions by Pablo Neruda (Copper Canyon, 2001)

Heights of Macchu Picchu  by Pablo Neruda

Roland Barthes

Pedro Pietri

Eduardo Chirinos

Deborah Paredez

Lucie Brock-Broido

Natalie Diaz

Rita Dove

Lucille Clifton, “Shapeshifter”

Evan Lavender-Smith

Richard Greenfield

Farid Matuk

Czeslaw Milosz

John Jakes

Luce Irigaray

Who Carmen is reading lately that gives her energy

Rosa Alcalá, Daniel Borzutsky, Alejandra Pizarnik, Larry Levis, Dana Levin, Natalie Eilbert, Vanessa Villarreal, Kim Hyesoon

Other relevant links

Noemi Press

Poets House

Graywolf Press

Jeff Shotts

San Jose State University

City Lights Books (the spotlight series)

Cantomundo

Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly”

University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop

Brian Cassidy

Diane Wolkstein Archive at Library of Congress

Mommie Dearest