Episode 35: Aracelis Girmay

Commonplace: Conversations with Poets (and Other People)

English - August 15, 2017 10:00 - 1 hour - ★★★★★ - 206 ratings
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Previous Episode: Episode 34: Dr. Joshua Bennett

Next Episode: Episode 36: Dialogue Arts Project

Rachel Zucker speaks with poet Aracelis Girmay about creating new forms and structures, employing fragments, the time it takes to get to urgent questions, research, patience, appreciating snails with Kamau Brathwaite, menarche, estrangement, pregnancy, naming, our fathers and families, worrying about doing harm in poems, effort, June Jordan, Ross Gay, writing about family, history, avoiding and countering the language of violence and brutality, writing long poems and find ways to express anger and rage without adopting the language of tyranny and oppression.

EXTRA RESOURCES FOR EPISODE 35Books by Aracelis Girmay

The Black Maria (BOA Editions, 2016)

Kingdom Animalia (BOA Editions, 2011)

Teeth (Curbstone, 2007)

Changing, Changing (George Braziller, 2005)

Other Books and Writers Mentioned in the Episode

Monticello in Mind: Fifty Contemporary Poems on Jefferson by Lisa Russ Spaar (University of Virginia Press, 2016)