Commonplace: Conversations with Poets (and Other People)
121 episodes - English - Latest episode: 7 months ago - ★★★★★ - 206 ratingsIntimate and compelling interviews by Rachel Zucker with poets and other artists. Become a Patron & support our growing podcast! www.patreon.com/commonplacepodcast
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Episodes
Episode 71: Mira Jacob
June 16, 2019 10:00 - 1 hourRachel Zucker speaks with Mira Jacob, author and illustrator of a newly released graphic memoir GOOD TALK: A Memoir in Conversations. Zucker and Jacob speak about “the gaze of disbelief,” racism, raising sons in the age of Trump, the relationship between humor and anger, the lonely exhilaration of immersing oneself in a new medium, the challenges and pleasures of translating text into audio and the complicated work of making art about yourself, your children, family and friends.
Episode 70: Alicia Jo Rabins
May 12, 2019 10:00 - 1 hourRachel Zucker speaks with poet, musician and Jewish educator Alicia Jo Rabins about her new book, Fruit Geode, and her lifelong passion for writing. In an episode rich with music, Alicia Jo describes falling in love with Jewish learning, being a classically-trained violinist, learning American fiddle music from a busker, playing in a klezmer punk band, recording three albums of Girls in Trouble songs (written in the voices of female biblical figures), her one-woman rock opera about Bernie Mad...
Episode 69: Live Reading with Brown, Joseph, Meitner Parker, Pico, Tolbert, and Yanyi
April 30, 2019 10:00 - 56 minutesA live reading featuring past Commonplace guests Jericho Brown, Janine Joseph, Erika Meitner, Morgan Parker, Tommy Pico, TC Tolbert, and Yanyi, held in Passages Bookstore in Portland, OR, on March 30, 2019.
Episode 68: Live Reading w/ Calvocoressi, Falkner, Gay and Mark
April 18, 2019 10:00 - 53 minutesLive reading featuring Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Adam Falkner, Ross Gay and Sabrina Orah Mark hosted by Rachel Zucker at the Association of Writing Programs Conference in Portland, OR, on March 29, 2019. Includes a brief update on the state of the podcast and an invitation to leave a message on (347) 762-3405 with your comment, question, suggestion or friendly provocation about Commonplace.
Episode 67: John Biewen
March 26, 2019 12:02Rachel Zucker speaks with public radio reporter and documentarian John Biewen about his work at the Center for Documentary Studies, especially his two series Seeing White and MEN, which investigate the history and reach of whiteness and masculinity. Rachel and John talk about how John decided to make these series, about the format of Seeing White and MEN, how and why it was important and effective to have a recurring conversational partner or official co-host, the value of white people examin...
Episode 66: Sarah Gambito
March 08, 2019 11:00 - 1 hourRachel Zucker speaks with poet, professor and co-founder of Kundiman Sarah Gambito about writing after the 2016 election, their shared love of cooking, experiments in non-traditional teaching, going back to the ancients and redefining the goals of the creative writing workshop to include: care (of self and other), nourishment, joy and abundance. Gambito describes the loneliness she felt moving to New York in her mid-twenties, how and why she and Joseph Legaspi co-founded Kundiman (“a national...
Episode 65: Hillary Frank
February 14, 2019 11:00 - 1 hourAuthor, illustrator and podcaster Hillary Frank talks about how she tricked her way into radio, early writing failures, being driven by wanting to prove people wrong, the misogyny against mothers in media that she experienced while trying to tell audio stories about birth, motherhood and reproductive health, and how she finally started and grew her podcast The Longest Shortest Time. Frank talks about writing YA fiction and about her newly released nonfiction book, Weird Parenting Wins. Rachel...
Episode 64: John Keene (Translation Series, Ep. 2)
January 24, 2019 11:00 - 48 minutesEpisode 2 of Commonplace’s special series on translation John R. Keene is the author of Annotations and Counternarratives, both published by New Directions, as well as several other works, including the poetry collection Seismosis, with artist Christopher Stackhouse, and a translation of Brazilian author Hilda Hilst’s novel Letters from a Seducer. Born in St. Louis, Keene is a graduate of Harvard College and New York University, where he was a New York Times Fellow. He is the recipient of m...
Episode 63: Juliana Spahr
January 10, 2019 11:00 - 1 hourRachel Zucker speaks with poet, scholar and activist Juliana Spahr about teaching, language poetry, studying at SUNY Buffalo, post-colonialism and anti-colonialism, personal rules she established when living, writing and teaching in Hawaii, finding a more nuanced way of avoiding appropriation (without just avoiding it completely), who she is willing to upset, what it means to not uphold a nation, funding, the influence of the state on literature, why literature and higher education (especiall...
Episode 62: Khadijah Queen
December 18, 2018 11:00 - 1 hourRachel Zucker speaks with scholar, poet, playwright, professor, artist, mother Khadijah Queen about what she’s teaching, her doctoral studies, her memoir-in-progress, her newest book (I’m So Fine), her new, unpublished poems, simultaneity and happening-aliveness, emotion, emotion as knowledge, humor, healing, intuition, ancient traditions, fibromyalgia, gender violence, being single, the writing community in Denver, the patriarchy, wanting not only to begin but to continue, memes, and recogni...
Episode 61: Rosa Alcalá (Translation Series, Ep. 1)
November 20, 2018 11:00 - 1 hourEpisode 1 of Commonplace’s special series on translation. Rosa Alcalá is the author of three full-length collections of poetry, most recently, MyOTHER TONGUE (Futurepoem), and translator of several full-length translations including the recently released New and Selected Poems of Cecilia Vicuña (Kelsey Street Press) for which Alcalá received a translation fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts in 2015. Alcalá talks to Commonplace host Rachel Zucker about the experience of trans...
Episode 60: Robin Coste Lewis
November 07, 2018 11:00 - 1 hourHost Rachel Zucker speaks with Robin Coste Lewis, author of the 2015 National Book Award winning Voyage of the Sable Venus and poet laureate of Los Angeles, about when to say no, how to say no, wishing people would educate themselves on centuries old African American intellectual tradition before asking her to respond to obvious questions, professionalism, calling in, her position as Poet Laureate of Los Angeles, the pressure, power and exhaustion of having to offering historical correctives,...
Episode 59: Alison S. M. Kobayashi
October 09, 2018 10:00 - 1 hourRachel Zucker speaks with Alison S. M. Kobayashi, artist and performer, about Say Something Bunny!, her most recent theater/performance piece, how to engage the audience during a performance, what led her to become an artist, obsession, found objects, persona, collaboration, her experience with UnionDocs, and what it's like to see success after devoting six years to a project.
Episode 58: Cate Marvin
September 05, 2018 10:00 - 1 hourRachel Zucker speaks with poet and professor Cate Marvin, author of Oracle, A Fragment of the Queen’s Head, and the World’s Tallest Disaster, co-editor of Legitimate Dangers and co-founder and former president of VIDA “a non-profit feminist organization committed to creating transparency around the lack of gender parity in the literary landscape.” Marvin talks about moving from Staten Island, NY to Scarborough, ME, teaching at different types of educational institutions, writing about childho...
Episode 57: Dorothea Lasky
August 15, 2018 10:00 - 1 hourRachel Zucker speaks with poet and educator Dorothea Lasky about the volume and quality of her voice, the game Kill, Marry, Fuck, rules, craft, associational thinking, obsession as a vital part of learning and creativity, preschool pedagogy, the penultimate part of poems, being only-children, witnessing one’s own life, Albert Einstein, not going to medical school, getting degrees in Education, the movie The Shining, motherhood, misogyny, Lasky’s essay “Why I am Sad,” a difficult interpersonal...
Episode 56: Jennifer Kronovet
July 26, 2018 10:00 - 1 hourRachel Zucker speaks with poet and translator Jennifer Kronovet about translating the Chinese poet Liu Xia, choosing a pseudonym, the ethics of translation, negotiating appropriation, how to engage other cultures when you’re not from that culture, translating Yiddish poet Celia Dropkin, how to pull an older work into the present, being a Jew in Berlin, learning a new language to find your own lineage, an amazing coincidence about a small town in Romania, Paul Celan, Charles K. Bliss, a perfec...
Episode 55: Anne Waldman
July 11, 2018 10:00 - 1 hourRachel Zucker speaks with Anne Waldman about Allen Ginsberg, “being on the job,” mantra, embodiment, the refugee vow, gender, the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, archive, undertaking a long project, her insatiable curiosity, Balinese dolls, ritual, patriarchy, the maternal imagination and so much more.
Episode 54: Gerald Stern
June 27, 2018 10:00Rachel Zucker speaks with poet, essayist and educator Gerald Stern about his new poems, his old poems, Tourette Syndrome, keeping in touch with students, the Iowa Writers Workshop, teaching, place, memory, writing (not nice things about) living or identifiable people, Jewish identity and much more.
Episode 53: Tommy Pico
June 13, 2018 10:00 - 1 hourRachel Zucker speaks with poet Tommy Pico about his first three books: IRL, Nature Poem, and Junk. Pico talks about epic cycles, the birdsong, growing up on a Kumeyaay reservation, becoming a poet, the culture shock and class shock of going to college in the Northeast, deciding not to go to medical school, training himself to become a performer, his influences and the teachers who helped him stop taking the easy way out and write longer work, learning to write no matter what, letting his voic...
Episode 52: Richard Siken
May 23, 2018 10:00 - 1 hourHost Rachel Zucker speaks with poet Richard Siken, author of Crush and War of the Foxes and publisher and poetry editor at Spork Press. They talk about his current five-book project, the restrictions he uses in each book during its composition, how these restrictions can help him avoid repetition, strategies inherent in poetry, rhetoric and discourse, Siken's rules for editing, not naming names, the idea and (f)utility of art therapy, teaching, the job market, the logistics and economics of f...
Episode 51: TC Tolbert
May 11, 2018 10:00 - 1 hourHost Rachel Zucker talks with poet and educator TC Tolbert (author of Gephyromania and co-editor of Troubling the Line) about a car accident that changed the course of TC's writing life, the process of healing, learning to love the smallest things, having to ask someone to carry your weight, speaking to a younger self, *seeing one aspect of life as a metaphor for other patterns of living*, and coming out as trans. They talk about teaching, wanting to go back to school, and about the Bagley Wr...
Episode 50: Inside Commonplace
April 26, 2018 10:00 - 2 hoursFor this special “Inside Commonplace” episode, Rachel Zucker speaks with her son Judah, her mentee Yanyi, and her husband Joshua Goren. These conversations help Rachel examine the history of Commonplace and reveal more about her work, her personal life, and the pleasures and challenges of making this podcast. Rachel and her guests (or is it the other way around?) discuss teaching, gender, listening, marriage, mental health, privilege, and much more
Episode 49: CAConrad
April 04, 2018 10:00 - 1 hour - 89.2 MBRachel Zucker speaks with poet CAConrad about their Somatic poetry rituals, their childhood in rural Western Pennsylvania, becoming an avid reader, running away from home, the AIDS epidemic, writing The Book of Frank over an 18 year period, anti-efficiency, marketing research, the 1998 murder of CA’s boyfriend, Earth, using a somatic ritual to cure a pernicious depression, and CA’s recently published book, While Standing In Line for Death. CAConrad describes their writing process, how to get ...
Episode 48: Poets at MacDowell: Destiny Birdsong, Juleen Johnson, Jenny George, Eloisa Amezcua, & Amanda Galvan Huynh
March 21, 2018 10:00 - 1 hour - 96.5 MBThey talk about their particular interests—writing about women of color, writing about place, writing from unknowing or from knowing to unknowing, writing about the relationship between humans and animals, working with found texts, writing about assimilation and loss of culture, bi-linguality—and about their shared experiences at MacDowell. They offer advice for folks who might be headed to a residency, talk about various writing processes, and about what was wonderful and what was challengin...
Episode 47: Erin Riley
March 07, 2018 11:00 - 2 hours - 114 MBHost Rachel Zucker talks with textile artist Erin Riley about how she started weaving, the importance of making work no one saw, promiscuity, risky behavior, addiction, how her work became more detailed and came to have more depth, learning things without learning them, pornography, selfies, the loss of meaning when images are repeated, slowing down, being deliberate, girlhood obsession with one’s body, yeast infections, UTIs, menstruation, using images of her own body in her tapestries, tatt...
Episode 46: Allison Parrish
February 14, 2018 11:00 - 2 hoursHost Rachel Zucker speaks with poet, programmer and professor, Allison Parrish. They talk about Articulations, Parrish’s first book of poetry, why she wanted to publish a book, “the threat of permanence,” Allison’s background in linguistics, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and how she made the poems in Articulations. They discuss phonemes, word vectors, semantic and phonetic similarity and proximity, and the post-processing procedures she used, as well as the ways in which computer...
Episode 45: Tyehimba Jess
January 31, 2018 11:00 - 1 hourRachel Zucker talks with poet Tyehimba Jess about his Pulitzer-prize-winning book, Olio. They talk about Scott Joplin, Henry Box Brown, Blind Boone, Blind Tom, Millie and Christine McCoy Twins, Edmonia Lewis, the Fisk Jubilee singers and the other historical figures in Jess’ book. They talk about minstrelsy, captivity, agency, wonder and play, and about the forms of the poems within the book including syncopated or contrapuntal sonnets, ghazal, golden shovel and other, and the unusual physica...
Episode 44: Matthew Zapruder
January 10, 2018 11:00 - 1 hourRachel Zucker speaks to poet, prose writer, professor, editor, publisher, Matthew Zapruder, an hour after his interview on Leonard Lopate Show, about Ai Weiwei, Tracey Ullman, and being a Commonplace listener. Zucker and Zapruder discuss their relationship as writer-editor, how Matthew appears in Rachel’s poems, power, sharing work with friends and trusted readers, the history of Wave Books, the Poetry Bus, why Matthew wrote Why Poetry?, Matthew’s relationship with his father and his father’s...
Episode 43: Airea D. Matthews
December 21, 2017 11:00 - 2 hoursRachel Zucker talks with Airea D. Matthews about her new book, Simulacra, and about (not)understanding, poems as places to show what you (don’t)know, reading, poetry as a place to ask questions and have a conversation, ordering a manuscript, getting help with a manuscript-in-progress, burning a manuscript, kicking the voices out of one’s head to find one’s voice, self as relatable through the other, representation, the connective tissue of humanity, helping a reader become accustomed to uncer...
Episode 42: Gabrielle Calvocoressi
December 06, 2017 11:00 - 2 hoursRachel Zucker talks with poet, editor, professor Gabrielle Calvocoressi, author of three full length collections, most recently Rocket Fantastic, about her new book. They also talk about wanting things, reading in New York, God, prayer, nystagmus (a neurological eye condition), practicing Judaism (but not converting to Judaism) in Los Angeles and in the South, gender identity, gender expression, sexual fantasies, gayness and queerness, butch lesbianism, bros, the symbol she uses in Rocket Fan...
Episode 41: Danez Smith
November 15, 2017 11:00 - 1 hourRachel Zucker talks with Danez Smith, author of [insert] boy and Don’t Call Us Dead (recently shortlisted for the National Book Award) about confessional-testimonial poems, sonnets, essential poems, poets and books, Cave Canem, the MFA industrial complex, not feeling desired, depression, community, living and learning, Minneapolis, living as a full-time artist, their writing space, hanging out with grandma, HIV+ diagnosis, Danez’s new poems, writing a time travel novel, play, getting over imp...
Episode 40: Kaveh Akbar
November 02, 2017 10:00 - 2 hoursRachel Zucker speaks with Kaveh Akbar about his first full-length poetry collection, Calling a Wolf a Wolf. They talk about recovery, addiction, Ellen Bryant Voigt’s unpunctuated line, teaching, his writing process for poetry or prose, the hutzpah and/or cluelessness that enabled him to reach out to established poets, the founding and process of running Divedapper.com (Kaveh’s interview site), the art of interviewing, using poetry to press the pleasure button, social media, white poets writin...
Episode 39: Erika L. Sánchez
October 18, 2017 10:00 - 1 hourRachel Zucker speaks with Erika Sánchez about her first book of poems, her first YA novel (currently shortlisted for the National Book Award), her experience as a sex advice columnist, how her manuscript became a book, writing unlikeable characters, shame, obsessions, sex, making things up in poems and prose, authenticity, feminism, Buddhism, and DACA.
Episode 38: Sharon Olds
October 04, 2017 10:00 - 2 hoursRachel Zucker talks to acclaimed, award winning poet Sharon Olds about dope, talking nicely to yourself when you’re alone, noticing one’s tiniest thoughts, the advantages of being an “ordinary enough” person, Brenda Hillman and Community of Writers (formerly known as Squaw Valley), teaching, the rhythm of writing, Odes, sharing poems, being truthful, Galway Kinnell, how to deal with bad reviews, how to deal with praise, envy, talent, self-esteem, jealousy, heteromania, eros, intimacy, anger, ...
Episode 37: Sheila Heti and Sarah Manguso
September 19, 2017 10:00 - 2 hoursRachel Zucker talks with Sheila Heti and Sarah Manguso about literary friendship, Sarah’s two recent books, Sheila’s manuscript in progress, maternal ambivalence, uncertainty, sacrifice of self, envy, curiosity, being a daughter, attachment and unattachment, shame, the sickening state of wondering whether or not to have children, abandonment, money, the things we cannot choose, choosing intolerable feelings, whiteness, class, the poetics of motherhood, purity, polluted writing, and motherhood...
Episode 36: Dialogue Arts Project
September 05, 2017 10:00 - 2 hoursRachel Zucker speaks with Adam Falkner, Lauren Whitehead and Carlos Andrés Gómez about their involvement with the Dialogue Arts Project, a non-profit, arts-based organization in which artist-facilitators help schools, businesses and organizations communicate more effectively across lines of social identity and difference. These three amazing artists talk about how working with DAP has affected their creative work, their teaching, their lives and their priorities. They talk about how a worksho...
Episode 35: Aracelis Girmay
August 15, 2017 10:00 - 1 hourRachel 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 ange...
Episode 34: Dr. Joshua Bennett
August 01, 2017 10:00 - 1 hourRachel Zucker speaks with poet, performer, educator and scholar Dr. Joshua Bennett about writing a poem for a friend’s wedding, the relationship between performance and page, growing up in South Yonkers and attending a largely white private school, the birth of Black Studies, creating alternative gathering and learning spaces, infiltrating established institutions, the June Jordan fellowship at Columbia’s Center for Justice, the writers and thinkers who inspire Bennett, and how to write about...
Episode 33: Sabrina Orah Mark
July 18, 2017 10:00 - 2 hoursRachel Zucker speaks with writer Sabrina Orah Mark (author of The Babies and Tsim Tsum) right before the first night of Passover. They talk about Judaism, surrealism, Claudia Rankine and Kenneth Koch, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, being good at being pummeled, the prose poem, the kabbalistic concept of tsim tsum, the Holocaust, Jewish identification, what makes a Nazi a Nazi, empathy, Trump, slavery, living in Georgia, the commodification of trauma, teaching outside the academy, “the crying roo...
Episode 32: Laynie Browne
July 03, 2017 10:00 - 1 hourRachel Zucker speaks with poet, professor Laynie Browne about schools of poetry, poetic influences, personal losses, feminism, contemplative poetics, devotional practices, spirituality, writing for a small audience, homage, writing for survival, poetry as a form of protection and as a coping mechanism, the many, many books and projects Laynie is currently working on, suffering, illness, and the importance of listening.
Episode 31: Carmen Giménez Smith
June 15, 2017 10:00 - 2 hoursRachel 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, poe...
Episode 30: Sarah Vap
June 01, 2017 10:00 - 1 hourRachel Zucker speaks with poet Sarah Vap about Sarah’s unpublished and evolving manuscript, sentimentality, extreme susceptibility, interruptibility, raising sons, toxic masculinity, the invisible violence of the state, and the extended emergency of mothering young children. Their conversation is informed by Sarah's presentation for Protean Acts: The Art of Reinvention, a panel for the 2017 Association of Writing Programs conference in Washington D.C., of which an excerpt is also included in ...
Episode 29: Molly Peacock
May 23, 2017 10:44 - 2 hoursRachel Zucker speaks with poet, memoirist, essayist, and teacher Molly Peacock about authenticity, performance, fear, a woman’s presentation of an authentic self, confessional poetry, constructing art from the material of life, female crafts, photography, the relationship of constructedness to privilege, teaching, formalism, her friendship with poet Phillis Levin, watching the light change in a room, Mary Delany, Molly’s decision not to have children, giving up perfectionism, psychotherapy, t...
Episode 28: Poems for Mother's Day
May 14, 2017 10:00 - 1 hourEpisode 28 is a special Mother’s Day episode featuring a collection of poems chosen and read by poets who are mothers.
Episode 27: Rita Dove
April 25, 2017 10:00 - 1 hourRachel Zucker talks with Rita Dove, former Poet Laureate, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, author of more than 15 books and University of Virginia professor about political poetry, creative writing programs, the usefulness of prosody, form as ‘a talisman against disintegration,’ the public intimacy of social media, her poem ‘Parsley,’ audience, code switching, why some poems are hard to read, blackness and other people’s expectations of her as a black woman, getting over the Iowa voice, narrativ...
Episode 26: Alice Notley
April 18, 2017 10:00 - 1 hourHost Rachel Zucker speaks with one of her most important influences and inspirations, author of more than 30 books, poet Alice Notley. They talk about a recent reading that Notley gave with Eileen Myles and Sonia Sanchez that Zucker attended, Notley’s reading and poetic styles, and how Zucker came to Notley’s work. They also discuss writing an epic, suffering, writing about family, writing through pain, communication with the dead, how Notley represents her deceased brother, poetry as the pub...
Episode 25: Ross Gay
April 11, 2017 10:00 - 1 hourRachel Zucker speaks with poet, teacher, gardner and community organizer Ross Gay. Gay is the author of Bringing Down the Shovel, Against Which, River, and Catlog of Unabashed Gratitude which won the Kinglsey Tufts Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Zucker and Gay talk about gardens, seasonal changes, teenage boys, anger, sorrow, stress reduction, and how poems can help you look at difficult emotions. Gay reads from his book Catlog a...
Episode 24: Julie Carr
April 04, 2017 10:00 - 1 hourRachel Zucker speaks with poet, professor, translator, dancer, choreographer Julie Carr about her book Think Tank and her many other recent projects. They discuss narrative, abstraction, prose envy, pleasure, desire, movement, reading with a group, compositional process and writing habits, homophonic translation, writing-through-reading, pheromonal meter, improvisation, form, mode, and “the poetics of containment.” Carr describes how she and her husband Tim Roberts founded Counterpath Press a...
Episode 23: Morgan Parker
March 15, 2017 10:00 - 2 hoursRachel Zucker speaks with poet Morgan Parker (author of Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night and There are More Beautiful Things than Beyoncé) in front of a LIVE audience at the KGB Red Room on February 27, 2017. Morgan reads new work, discusses what she’s working on, who she’s writing for, and her 13 husbands. They talk about confessional poetry, performance, blackness, whiteness, therapy, Beyoncé, authenticity, revision, therapy as reparations, and Nelly.
Episode 22: Undocupoets 2 — Javier Zamora, Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, and Janine Joseph
March 02, 2017 11:00 - 1 hourRachel Zucker speaks with poets Javier Zamora, Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, and Janine Joseph who are working to remove publication obstacles for undocumented or previously undocumented poets and writers. They speak about the work of Undocupoets, the current, constantly shifting state of U.S. immigration, the petition they started, fundraising and other actions of literary activism. They also talk about mixed-status families, “exceptionalism,” and the fear and invisibility experienced by peopl...