Waves Breaking: Recent Episodes
Avren Keating
This is a podcast where I interview contemporary poets in trans and gender-variant poetry. We discuss their literary contributions, methods, insights, and lives.
Finally, after a long break, Waves Breaking returns with this interview with Kamden Ishmael Hilliard. Kam generously shares their time with me to discuss their debut book of poems, MissSettl, out last year with Nightboat Books. We go in deep to discuss their thoughts around the sentence, modes of speech, writing poems within this current era of late-stage capitalism, and teaching students.
Kamden Ishmael Hilliard was born in La Jolla, CA; their fam settled on O'ahu, Hawai'i. Kamden holds a BA in American Studies from the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa and an MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Kamden, a nonbinary Black settler who goes by Kam, works on issues of surveillance, race, queerness, contemporary art and American politics. They're thankful for support from The National YoungArts Foundation, The Davidson Institute, Sarah Lawrence College, and The UCROSS Foundation. Kam’s writing appears in West Branch, The Black Warrior Review, Tagvverk, Denver Quarterly, The Columbia Review, and other publications. Formerly, they served as an AmeriCorps VISTA, held Maytag, Teaching-Writing, and Pfluflaught Fellowships at the University of Iowa, and were the 2020-2022 Anisfield-Wolf Fellow in Publishing and Writing at the Cleveland State University Poetry Center, a reader at Flypaper Lit, and a board member at VIDA: Women In Literary Arts. Kamden's website
Kamden's Instagram
Go buy MissSettl!
Mentioned in the interview:
- Joyelle McSweeney
- Jayson P. Smith
- “Poem About My Rights” by June Jordan
- bell hooks
- Hoodie Allen (I’m sorry lol)
- Skee-Lo
- Punahou School Hawaii
- Iowa Writers Workshop and the Cold War
- James Baldwin
-
Nene (bird)
- The nene population is on the rebound from its endangered status
-
Beloved by Toni Morrison
-
Huge plug for everyone to listen to the audiobook version of Beloved read by Toni Morrison herself. Find it on Libby!
- Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson
-
Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (film)
-
My poem with Judge Doom in it is “After Saturn Ate His Own Kid” at the bottom of this page.
- West Side Story (film)
- Goodbye, Vitamin by Rachel Khong
Kam’s Anti-recommendations:
- Apocalypse Now (film)
- The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
- The Sandman (TV series)
This show's Editor and Social Media Manager is Mitchel Davidovitz.
The Sound of Waves Breaking is a clip of my cousin Ian and me (fake band name: Diminutive Denizens) doing a cover of “Dig My Grave” by They Might Be Giants. It’s on this cover album of Apollo 18 if you want to listen to the whole thing. There are a bunch of other covers you can listen to there for free, including a very dumb skit my friend Greg and I did for one of the “Fingertips.” Greg’s the host of the excellent podcast This Might Be a Podcast which I’ve also guested on many times. Check it out!
Photo of Yanyi, taken by him
In this episode I spoke with Yanyi about his new book, Dream of the Divided Field, and his newsletter, The Reading.
Yanyi is the author of Dream of the Divided Field (One World Random House, 1 March 2022) and The Year of Blue Water (Yale University Press 2019), winner of the 2018 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize. His work has been featured in or at NPR’s All Things Considered, New York Public Library, Granta, and New England Review, and he is the recipient of fellowships from Asian American Writers’ Workshop and Poets House. He holds an MFA in Poetry from New York University and was most recently poetry editor at Foundry. Currently, he teaches creative writing at large and gives writing advice at The Reading.
Yanyi's website
You can purchase Dream of the Divided Field here
Yanyi's Twitter
Yanyi's Instagram
Various books, movies, podcasts, etc. mentioned in this episode:
- Algorithm crowd sounds
- Surviving R. Kelly docuseries
- Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew
-
AI generated imagery
- @images_ai
- WOMBO Dream
- DALL-E
- Virgina Woolf’s audio BBC interview
- When We Were Young Festival and its much parodied poster
-
Black Mountain Poets
-
Olson’s "Projective Verse" manifesto, some explicit field talk
-
Lydia Davis’s "Hand" story (this is the whole story lol):
-
"Beyond the hand holding this book that I’m reading, I see another hand lying idle and slightly out of focus — my extra hand."
- (more stories here)
- "The Cows" chapbook
-
Yanyi's newsletter
-
Letter on why he left Substack
- Yanyi at the Poetry Project discussing de las Rivas's "Black Sun" and fascist dogwhistling in contemporary poetry
- Ghost, the platform Yanyi uses to now send his newsletters
- bell hooks’s Teaching to Transgress full PDF
- Tell Them Anything You Want: A Portrait of Maurice Sendak documentary
- Laura Engels Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie series
-
FEELING ASIAN podcast episodes:
-
An Evening With Two Asian Therapists (feat. Peter Adams, Ph.D and Melissa Yao, Ph.D)
- Asian Seeking Asian (therapists)
Editor and Social Media Manager: Mitchel Davidovitz
Host and Producer: Avren Keating
Sound of Waves Breaking: Sounds from this video of Merlin, my sweet 5-year-old Frenchie that died of a brain tumor in the time between recording and editing this episode. I love you, little bubs.
In this interview, I spoke with Sarah Nnenna Loveth Nwafor about their latest publication Already Knew You Were Coming. We discuss Igbo cosmology and time, vengeance poetry, their process in writing this chapbook, and more.
Sarah Nnenna Loveth Nwafor (They/Them) is a queer Igbo-American Poet, Educator, and Facilitator who descends of a powerful ancestry. They believe that storytelling is magick, and they speak to practice traditions of Igbo orature. When they witness, their forebears are pleased. Sarah has been writing for a minute and is learning something new about their voice each year, but one thing they’re proud to share is that they have a chapbook out with Game Over Books! When Sarah's not writing; they’re probably sitting under a tree, reading about Love, dancing with friends or cooking a bomb-ass meal like the true Taurus they are.
Go buy Already Knew You Were Coming
Sarah’s Instagram
Sarah’s website
Books, artists, musicians, etc. mentioned in this episode:
- Mithsuca Berry
- Alexis Pauline Gumbs’s Dub: Finding Ceremony
- Sister Love: The Letters of Audre Lorde and Pat Parker 1974-1989
- I.S. Jones’s Spells of My Name
- Nwaobiala
- Dena Igutsi’s Cut Woman
Editor and Social Media Manager: Mitchel Davidovitz
Host and Producer: Avren Keating
Sound of Waves Breaking: Melody Loop 95 BPM, DaveJf
In this episode, I spoke with Cody-Rose Clevidence about their latest publication, Aux Arc / Trypt Ich, out with Nightboat Books. We dug into language, exploring motif, grief, love—all that good stuff.
Cody-Rose Clevidenceis the author of BEAST FEAST (2014) and Flung/Throne (2018), both from Ahsahta Press, Listen My Friend This is the Dream I Dreamed Last Night from The Song Cave and Aux Arc / Trypt Ich as well as several handsome chapbooks (flowers and cream, NION, garden door press, Auric). They live in the Arkansas Ozarks with their medium sized but lion-hearted dog, Birdie and an absolute lunatic cat.
Cody-Rose's Instagram
Buy Aux Arc / Trypt Ich!
Poets, books, etc. mentioned in this episode:
- Cody-Rose Clevidence's BEAST FEAST
- Turquoise waters of the Ozarks
- "Apophatic" was the word I was trying to remember! I can't read this work because of the paywall, but it seems like it might be useful in exploring Manley Hopkins's contemplations of God.
- H.D.
- Homer
- Algernon Charles Swinburne
- William Wordsworth
- English literature's Romanticism
- Gerard Manley Hopkins
- Stephen Taylor's Building Thoreau's Cabin
- Jerome Rothenberg (editor), Technicians of the Sacred
- Jerome Rothenberg (editor), Shaking the Pumpkin: Traditional Poetry of the Indian North Americas
- Guy Deutscher's The Unfolding of Language
- Guy Deutscher's Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages
- George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's Metaphors We Live By
Editor and Social Media Manager: Mitchel Davidovitz
Host and Producer: Avren Keating
Sound of Waves Breaking: "Arkansas" by John Linnell. At last, one half of TMBG makes it onto the pod.
In this episode, I spoke with féi hernandez about Hood Criatura, their poetry collection released in 2020. We also spoke about their incredible skills as an illustrator, and féi recommends some fantastic reads.
féi hernandez (b.1993 Chihuahua, Mexico) is a trans, Inglewood- raised, formerly undocumented immigrant artist, writer, healer. They have been published in POETRY, Pank Magazine, Oxford Review of Books, Frontier Poetry, The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext, amongst others. They are a Define American Fellow for 2021 and are currently the Board President of Gender Justice Los Angeles. féi is the author of the full-length poetry collection Hood Criatura (Sundress Publications 2020) which was on NPR’s Best Books of 2020. féi collects Pokémon plushies.
féi’s website
féi’s instagram
Purchase Hood Criatura
Poets, books, etc. mentioned in this episode:
- Gloomy the Naughty Grizzly, anime series
- Sailor Moon, anime series
- Natalie Diaz’s My Brother Was an Aztec
- Natalie Diaz’s Postcolonial Love Poem
- Ambar Lucid and her song “Story to Tell”
- féi’s illustrations
- Hood Criatura on Goodreads, Barnes and Noble, and Amazon. Go leave a review :)
Editor and Social Media Manager: Mitchel Davidovitz
The Sound of Waves Breaking is “Project - 3_30_21, 6.55 PM.wav” by bradygalp123
In this episode, I spoke with Larkin Christie about their book gather all your supple creatures.
Larkin Christie is a queer poet living on unceded Pocumtuc land in what is currently known as Western Massachusetts. Their second collection, gather all your supple creatures, is out now. Their creative work draws on experiences as an educator, organizer, and dancer.
Larkin's website
Larkin's Instagram
Go buy gather all your supple creatures!
Quotes, workshop, and media mentioned in this episode:
In Surreal Life, workshop Honeyfitz, band From Larkin: "I just did some research and the quote is actually by Shelly Smith, published in June Jordan’s Poetry for the People: A Revolutionary Blueprint. It is 'Deciding whom to publish, whose words are important or good or right, whose message is valuable, is about politics. Self-publishing is about power, about taking the responsibility to disseminate your words yourself.' Editor and Social Media Manager: Mitchel Davidovitz Sound of Waves Breaking: "Larks in Limburg, Netherlands.mp3" by @robkuster
In this episode, I spoke with KB about their zine “A New Relationship to Pain,” their relationship to poetry, the pandemic, working as a poet and educator, and more.
KB is from Stop Six, Fort Worth, Texas. They are a Black queer nonbinary poet, educator, student affairs professional, and lover of most plants/people. They want to be your friend as well as your reminder to think in abundance. They have words published in Cincinnati Review, Puerto Del Sol, Palette Poetry, and other equally pretty places. Their chapbook How To Identify Yourself with a Wound (Kallisto Gaia Press, 2022) won the 2020 Saguaro Poetry Prize and was written with support from workshops with Lambda Literary, In Surreal Life, The Watering Hole, The Hurston/Wright Foundation, The Speakeasy Project, and Winter Tangerine. They are currently a 2021 PEN America Emerging Writers fellow and an African American Leadership Institute - Austin fellow.
When not on stage or in the page, they serve as Program Coordinator for the Gender and Sexuality Center at the University of Texas at Austin, Founding Executive Director of Interfaces, Co-Founder/President of Embrace Austin, and educator in various settings. Follow them on Twitter or Instagram at @earthtokb and access their exclusive teaching, writing, and other content at patreon.com/earthtokb. They live in Austin, TX where they’re writing books & trying their best.
KB’s Zine “a new relationship to pain”
KB’s Instagram
KB’s Twitter
Poets, books, etc. mentioned in this episode:
- Jericho Brown’s The Tradition
- Taylor Byas's poetry
- George Abraham’s "ars poetica in which every pronoun is a Free Palestine” (second poem on this page)
- Justin Phillip Reed’s "Leaves of Grass"
- Claudia Delfina Cardona’s “What Remains"
- Khalypso’s “You Really Seem to Think I’ll Miss You”
The Sound of Waves Breaking is “DesertTexasT01” by Riabad
Editor and Social Media Manager: Mitchel Davidovitz
In this episode I spoke with Rainie Oet about their recent publication Glorious Veils of Diane.
Content warning: We talk a lot about blood and some about self-harming
Rainie Oet is a nonbinary writer and game designer, former Editor-in-Chief of Salt Hill Journal, and the author of Glorious Veils of Diane (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2021), as well as two other books: Porcupine in Freefall and Inside Ball Lightning. They have an MFA in Poetry from Syracuse University, where they were awarded the Shirley Jackson Prize in Fiction.
- Rainie's website
- Rainie's Twitter
- Go buy Glorious Veils of Diane
- Rainie's Inside Ball Lightning
- Rainie's Porcupine in Freefall
Artists, books, films, games etc. mentioned in this episode: * Diane Arbus * Blood elemental in D&D * Serena Perrone's "In Our Cinematic Lives" * Ladybird, film * David Lynch movies * Collected Poems by Zbigniew Herbert which includes the translated Hermes, Dog and Star. * "The Little Box" by Vasko Popa * Chase Berggrun's R E D
+ My interview with Chase about *R E D*
- Dragula, TV Show
- 최호소 HOSO Terra Toma, drag performer
- Yume Nikki, indie game
- Octavia Butler's Lilith's Brood series
- Merlin Sheldrake's Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures
The Sound of Waves Breaking: "Sanchon Drum - Seoul Korea" by RTB45
Editor and Social Media Manager: Mitchel Davidovitz
In this episode, I dive deep into one poem with its authors, Anaïs Duplan and imogen xtian smith. Tune in for our conversation about of art, love, and utopias.
Anaïs Duplan is a trans poet, curator, and artist. He is the author of a book of essays, Blackspace: On the Poetics of an Afrofuture (Black Ocean, 2020), a full-length poetry collection, Take This Stallion (Brooklyn Arts Press, 2016), and a chapbook, Mount Carmel and the Blood of Parnassus* (Monster House Press, 2017). He has taught poetry at the University of Iowa, Columbia University, Sarah Lawrence College, and St. Joseph’s College.
His video works have been exhibited by Flux Factory, Daata Editions, the 13th Baltic Triennial in Lithuania, Mathew Gallery, NeueHouse, the Paseo Project, and will be exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Art in L.A in 2021.
As an independent curator, he has facilitated curatorial projects in Chicago, Boston, Santa Fe, and Reykjavík. He was a 2017-2019 joint Public Programs fellow at the Museum of Modern Art and the Studio Museum in Harlem. In 2016, he founded the Center for Afrofuturist Studies, an artist residency program for artists of color, based at Iowa City’s artist-run organization Public Space One. He works as Program Manager at Recess.
- An's website
- An's Twitter
- An's Instagram
imogen xtian smith (fka xtian w) is a poet & performer. Recent work is featured or forthcoming in Peach Mag, Cosmonauts Ave, the Rumpus, & WE WANT IT ALL: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics. They live in Brooklyn.
- imogen's Twitter
- imogen's Instagram
Places, people, art, books etc. mentioned in this episode:
- We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics, ed. by Andrea Abi-Karam and Kay Gabriel
- An interview I did a while back with Kay Gabriel and the other editors of Vetch
- An interview I did with Andrea Abi-Karam
- Berl's Brooklyn Poetry Shop
- Take This Stallion
- An and imogen's Trans Oral History project
- Mohammed Zenia's Tel Aviv
- imogen's review for Tel Aviv for the Poetry Project
- Posthumous selected works of Wanda Coleman, Wicked Enchantments
- Bernadette Mayer's Midwinter Day
- Terrance Hayes
- Bahar Orang's Where Things Touch: A Meditation on Beauty
Editor and Social Media Manager: Mitchel Davidovitz
The Sound of Waves Breaking is "Gymnasium, Class Reunion in Distance" by ecfike. Meeting people in-person and hugging after a long period of time? I miss that and them.
In this episode I spoke with noor ibn najam about her recent work and writing process. they also discussed showing work to friends and skill-sharing. Sorry that the intro and outro audio is a little wonky this time around, but my interview with noor is still good.
noor is a poet who teases, challenges, breaks, and creates language. she's received fellowships from Callaloo and The Watering Hole and is a recent resident of the Vermont Studio Center. her poems have been published and anthologized with DIAGRAM, ANMLY, The Academy of American Poets, the Rumpus, Bettering American Poetry, and others. her chapbook, PRAISE TO LESSER GODS OF LOVE, was published by Glass Poetry Press in 2019.
noor’s website
purchase Praise to Lesser Gods of Love
noor’s Patreon
Writers, poems, books, events mentioned in this episode:
- The Arab Apocalypse, by Etel Adnan
- noor's poem "questions arabic asked in english (colonial fit)”
- an interview of Douglas Kearney where he discusses compositional hierarchy
- “I am an artist and I'm sensitive about my shit,” a lyric from Erykah Badu ‘s “Tyrone.”
- Zong! by M. NourbeSe Philip
- “The Secret Name,” by W.S. Graham
- وسوس Arabic for "whispers of the devil in your ear"
- khaleel, artist and noor’s partner
- Qil, Astro-Black Metalbender behind the jewlery line BLACKMARZIAN
- Keziah Harrell, painter
- Jamal Jones on Twitter
-
kiki nicole
- here’s an interview kiki and I recorded last year
- noor’s Skill Swaps
The Sound of Waves Breaking is “Walking on Snow,” recorded by rivernile7.
Editor and Social Media Manager: Mitchel Davidovitz
This month’s guest is Aeon Ginsberg. We dug into their recently published book Greyhound and also talked about PoBiz/Big Lit, death, and teeth poetry.
Aeon Ginsberg (they/them) is an agender transfeminine writer and performer from Baltimore City, MD. They are the author of Greyhound, the 2019 winner of the Noemi Press Poetry Prize, and their work has been published in various magazines in print and online. Aeon is a Taurus, a bartending, and a bitch.
Aeon’s website
Aeon’s Twitter account
Go get Greyhound!
Writers, news, books, events mentioned in this episode:
-
Aeon’s previous chapbooks:
- Until the Cows Come Home (Elation Press, 2016)
- Loathe/Love/Lathe (Nostrovia! Press, 2017)
- Yanyi has written an excellent article regarding PoMag’s “trans issue” and critiquing special issues in general: “Counting Tokens: Special Issues and the Theatre of Delay.”
-
BeyondSpecialIssue folio organized by jayy dodd
- Roy Guzman on what happened after their close reading of Toby Martinez de las Rivas’s published and fascist work "Titan / All Is Still" in PoMag’s Nov 2018 issue.
- PoFound statement about how they plan to reorient themselves and dismantle white supremacist practice in their organization.
- “Exclusive: The Paris Review, the Cold War and the CIA,” in Salon
- speCt! books open letter to PoFound at the wake of the COVID-19 crisis
- “MICA professor resigns after former student alleges misconduct, says she informed college two years ago,” in The Baltimore Sun.
- Isobel Bess (sorry for accidentally using her previous name!)
- Jamie Berrout
- Marxist Poetry Podcast
- Magpie Killjoy's I Pity The Immortal
- RBG's personal trainer doing push-ups in front of her casket
- Chen Chen
- Shazia Hafiz Ramji
- David Davis
- Kayleb Candrilli
- Chris, a Christine and the Queens album
- “Hello -- A Greeting From Nowhere”
- Anne Boyer's What Resembles A Grave
- Peach Mag
- Fargo Tbakhi's 12 World's Interrupted By The Drone
- Aeon made a Spotify playlist of songs that are in conversation with their book
- Anne Carson quote: "If prose is a house, poetry is a man on fire running quite fast through it."
The Sound of Waves Breaking is this video Aeon sent me of Vin Diesel singing Rhianna.
Editor and Social Media Manager: Mitchel Davidovitz
If you want to get in contact with me, you can email me at wavesbreakingshow@gmail.com and/or message me @WavesBreakPod on Twitter.
This month I got to speak with Kama La Mackerel about their just-released book, ZOM-FAM, published by Metonymy Press. We go in-depth in discussion about their decolonial artistic practices and inspiration for the book.
Kama La Mackerel is a Montreal-based Mauritian-Canadian multi-disciplinary artist, educator, writer, community-arts facilitator and literary translator who works within and across performance, photography, installations, textiles, digital art and literature. Kama’s work is grounded in the exploration of justice, love, healing, decoloniality, hybridity, cosmopolitanism and self- and collective-empowerment. They believe that aesthetic practices have the power to build resilience and act as resistance to the status quo, thereby enacting an anticolonial practice through cultural production.
Kama has exhibited and performed their work internationally and their writing in English, French and Kreol has appeared in publications both online and in print. They have lived in far-flung places such as Pune, India and Peterborough, Ontario. ZOM-FAM, their debut poetry collection is published by Metonymy Press.
GO BUY ZOM-FAM! Kama's website Media, artists, books, etc mentioned in this episode:
- Kama will get to perform ZOM-FAM in Montreal this October :)
- "The Self-Love Cabaret: L’Amour se conjugue à la première personne"
- "From Thick Skin to Femme Armour," performance
- Artists who made the ZOM-FAM cover: Kai Yun Ching and Aun Li
- Kalapani
- "My Body is the Ocean" project and performance
- "Breaking the Promise of Tropical Emptiness: Trans Subjectivity in the Postcard" project
- Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl's Confabulous Memoir by Kai Cheng Thom
- Disclosure documentary
- Little Blue Encyclopedia (for Vivian), by Hazel Jane Plante
- My Art is Killing Me and Other Poems, by Amber Dawn
- "Explained: How Severe was the Mauritius Oil Spill," article in The Indian Express
- "Mauritius calls for urgent help to prevent oil spill disaster," article in The Guardian
- * Fundraiser to help Mauritian oil spill clean-up *
- "Before and after: Satellite images show how lightning complex fires scarred Bay Area landscape" article in The Mercury News
- "A California fire sparked by a gender reveal party has grown to more than 10,000 acres," an article for CNN. Because we definitely needed another reason to hate gender reveal parties, am I right?
- * Donate to Latino Community Foundation's Northern California Wildfires Relief Fund *
The Sound of Waves Breaking: "Ay Ay Lolo" by Menwar Editor and Social Media Manager: Mitchel Davidovitz
In this episode, I spoke with poet kiki nicole about their manuscript, Autobiography of the boi Venus which not published (yet!), their embroidery work, film work, and current interests.
kiki nicole is a Black, Queer, and Non-binary multimedia artist and poet based in Charlotte, North Carolina.. They’ve received invitations to fellowships such as Pink Door Writing Retreat, The Watering Hole, and Winter Tangerine. kiki nicole is currently a reader for Muzzle Magazine. They work to explore a Black, queer, femme & genderless universe that un/bodies, un/genders, & re/news, kiki hopes to lend a voice for the void in which Black femmes not only exist in plain view, but thrive.
kiki’s site
kiki’s instagram
Donation link to support kiki
Media, artists, books, etc mentioned in this episode:
- Winter Tangerine’s fellowship program
- jayy dodd
- venus selenite
- Tyrell Blacquemoss (TBN), who runs Cause Reign
- Find examples of kiki’s textile and multimedia work here
- ariella tai
- ariella tai’s "she's not going to get more dead"
- the first + the last, a experimental film/video and new media arts project for Black femmes, women, and non-men that kiki and ariella co-curate
- Lil Uzi Vert
- Katherine McKittrick's Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle
- “Stitches in Time” quilt exhibition, was not at the museum
- M. Norbese Philips's Zong!
- Yoruba deity Oshun
- Yoruba deity Yemaya
- Yoruba deity Shango
- Roman deity Venus
- Gríma Wormtongue from The Lord of the Rings
- Shakespeare’s Macbeth
- Toni Morrison’s Beloved
- Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower, Parable of the Talents, and Kindred
- Naked and Afraid reality series
- Xandria Phillips's HULL
- adrienne marie brown's Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good (Emergent Strategy)
- Big Thief’s "Not"
- Mitski
- noname’s “Song 33”
- Noname Book Club
- Oluwatoyin “Toyin” Salau
- kiki's syllabus “Into a New Year.” kiki notes “This is a syllabus of mine that I think ties a lot into what I was trying to convey near the end about preparing for a new world.”
- kiki’s pdf library “blk thots~” to decolonize your bookshelves!
The sound of waves breaking is Sylvester's “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real).”
This episode was edited and social media managed by Mitchel Davidovitz.
Stay safe, everyone!!
Như and I discussed her recent chapbook A System of Satellites and her writing practice, finding dignity as a trans poet, and writing past ingrained fear and doubt. She also asked me questions. Hear me stumble trying to answer questions about my writing practice and how I approach writing with personal experiences. Như Xuân Nguyễn is a queer and trans Vietnamese American poet and writer. A Kundiman Fellow and a graduate of the MFA program in Creative Writing at Rutgers-Newark, she won the 2018 Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship with her debut chapbook A System of Satellites. Her work has appeared in The Offing, DELUGE (Radioactive Moat), The Journal, The Shade Journal, and Juked. She is currently based in New York City, where she lives with her two cats, Arya and Azula.
Như's website
Buy Như's chapbook Note: I refer to a NOLA poetry fest panel that is no longer happening due to COVID-19. Wash your hands and stay at home, everyone. People and Books Mentioned: * Adrian Matejka * Cathy Park Hong's Minor Feelings * Tracy May Fuad * Emily Luan
Editor and Social Media Manager: Mitchel Davidovitz The Sound of Waves Breaking: Lunar Wind, @Walter_Odington
This episode, I got to talk with sung! sung is a writer and interdisciplinary artist from Korea. They are the author of What About the Rest of Your Life (Perfect Day Publishing) and Flowers Are for Pussies (Ghost City Press). Their work has appeared in Nat. Brut, Kweli Journal, Contrary, The James Franco Review, The Wanderer, and Crab Fat Magazine. Media, artists, books, etc mentioned in this episode: * sung's website * sung's Twitter * Kaveh Akbar bag of dirt tweet * Jamie Berrout's essays against publishing * Interview with Kaveh Akbar where he discusses "Poems are rarely on the side of power." * Not mentioned in the episode, but looks interesting to read (and it's free online!) on the subject of trauma and how our culture makes it a commodity: Decolonizing Trauma Studies: Trauma and Postcolonialism * Paintbucket * "To eat the fruit climb the tree" poem * Black Orpheus soundtrack * Dreaming of Ramadi in Detroit by Aisha Sabatini Sloan * "On Basquiat, the Black Body, and a Strange Sensation in My Neck" by Aisha Sabatini Sloan * Kendra Allen's When You Learn the Alphabet
The sound of waves breaking is "Wynd" by weerm This episode's editor and social media manager is Mitchel Davidovitz
In this episode, I had the opportunity to talk with Zefyr Lisowski about her book Blood Box.
Zefyr Lisowski is a trans and queer writer, artist, and North Carolinian currently living in NYC. She's a Poetry Co-editor for Apogee Journal and the author of Blood Box, winner of the Black River Editor's Choice Award from Black Lawrence Press and forthcoming fall 2019; she's also the author of the microchap Wolf Inventory (Ghost City Press, 2018) and is a 2019 Tin House Summer Workshop Fellow.
Zefyr's work has appeared or is forthcoming in Lit Hub, Nat. Brut., Muzzle Magazine, and DIAGRAM, among many other places; she's also received support from Sundress Academy for the Arts, McGill University, the New York Live Ideas Fest, and the 2019 CUNY Graduate Center Adjunct Incubator Grant for the arts. A 2018 nominee for the Pushcart Prize, she also goes by Zef.
Zefyr Lisowski's website
Go buy Blood Box!
Media, artists, books, etc mentioned in this episode:
- Sharon Pollock's play Blood Relations
- Angela Davis's short story "The Fall River Axe Murders"
- Angela Davis's Bloody Chamber
- Lizzie Borden's film Born in Flames
- Lizzie (2018 film)
- Muriel Leung
- Joey De Jesus
- Jessie Rice Evans
- Cyree Jarelle Johnson's SLINGSHOT
(and here's my interview with Cyree) - Diana Khoi Nguyen's Ghost Of
- Johanna Hedva's "Sick Woman Theory"
- @Mx_ctrl is my Instagram handle, and...I definitely failed Inktober
- Samuel Ace/ Linda Smukler's Meet Me There: Normal Sex & Home in three days. Don't wash.
Editor and Social Media Manager: Mitchel Davidovitz
Sound of Waves Breaking is "Cicada Single" by Jedo.
This episode, I had the chance to speak with Cyrée Jarelle Johnson about their book, SLINGSHOT.
Cyrée Jarelle Johnson (He/They) is a poet and writer from Piscataway, NJ. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Boston Review, Wussy, The Wanderer, Vice, Rewire News, The Root, and Nat. Brut among other publications. They earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University with support from Davis Putter Scholarship Fund.
SLINGSHOT, his first collection of poetry, is available now from Nightboat Books. Development of the work was supported by Astraea Foundations' Global Arts Fund, Culture/Strike Climate Change and Environmental Justice Fellowship, and Rewire News Disabled Writers Fellowship.
They tweet with significant queer millenial ennui at @CyreeJarelle
Cyrée's website
Cyrée's TED Talk "What is Autism Neutrality?"
Authors and books mentioned in the episode:
- Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha's Tonguebreaker and Care Work
- Kay Undlay Barrett's When the Chant Comes
- Britteney Black Rose Kapri's Black Queer Hoe
- Yanyi's Year of Blue Water
The Sound of Waves Breaking was "Natural Disaster" by @davidthomascairns
Editor, Social Media Manager: Mitchel Davidovitz
Host, Producer: Avren Keating
It's been a minute! Thanks for your patience as I've slogged through life. In this episode I spoke with Samuel Ace about his book Our Weather Our Sea.
Samuel Ace is a trans/genderqueer poet and sound artist. He is the author of several books, most recently Our Weather Our Sea (Black Radish 2019), the newly re-issued Meet Me There: Normal Sex and Home in three days. Don’t wash., (Belladonna* Germinal Texts 2019), and Stealth with poet Maureen Seaton. He is the recipient of the Astraea Lesbian Writer Award and the Firecracker Alternative Book Award in Poetry, as well as a two-time finalist for both the Lambda Literary Award and the National Poetry Series. Recent work can be found in Poetry, PEN America, Best American Experimental Poetry, Vinyl, and many other journals and anthologies. He currently teaches poetry and creative writing at Mount Holyoke College in western Massachusetts.
Sam's website
Buy Our Weather Our Sea
Also buy Meet Me There: Normal Sex & Home in three days. Don’t wash.
Books, poets, artists, etc mentioned in this episode:
- Ari Banias
- Oliver Baez Bendorf
- TC Tolbert's "Dear Melissa"
- j/j hastain
- Julie Carr's Real Life: An Installation
- Ronaldo Wilson's Lucy 72
- Douglas Kearney's Mess and Mess and
- M. NourbeSe Philip's ZONG!
- Ching-In Chen's recombinant
- Sawako Nakayasu's Mouth Eats Color
- Harmony Holiday a reading from 2015
- LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs's Twerk
- Caroline Bergvall's sound installations
- Cecilia Vicuña's New and Selected Poems Saborami (Chainlinks)
- Tracie Morris two poems
- Andrea Abi-Karam's EXTRATRANSMISSION
- Orlando White LETTERRS
- Maureen Seaton
- Rickey Laurentiis
- Philip B. Williams
- Ocean Vuong
- Farid Matuk
- Kaveh Akbar
- Angel Dominguez's D E S G R A C I A D O
- Ariana Reines's A Sand Book
- Trace Peterson's Since I Moved In
- Go listen to my interview with Roy over at the Marxist Poetry Podcast
The Sound of Waves Breaking: Samuel Ace's "These Nights"
Editor and Social Media Manager: Mitchel Davidovitz
I had the opportunity to talk with S. Brook Corfman at AWP this year! S. Brook Corfman is the author of Luxury, Blue Lace, chosen by Richard Siken for the Autumn House Rising Writer Prize, and two chapbooks: the letterpress Meteorites from DoubleCross Press and the digital collection of performance pieces The Anima from GaussPDF. The recipient of grants and fellowships from Lambda Literary, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council, recent work has appeared in DIAGRAM, Indiana Review, Muzzle, The Offing, Territory, and Quarterly West (Best of the Net Nomination), among other places. Born and raised in Chicago, Sam now lives in a turret in Pittsburgh.
S's website
Luxury, Blue Lace
Meteorites (chapbook)
Writers, topics, etc, mentioned in the show:
- Collection of essays on Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD) and why it's bad science
- I should not be surprised someone wrote a thinkpiece on The Little Mermaid as transgender figure
-
Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice
- A review of the version S. saw in Chicago
-
Dawn Lundy Martin
-
S recommends Discipline
- Mei Mei Berssenbrugge
This episode's Editor and Social Media Manager is Mitchel Davidovitz
The Sound of Waves Breaking is a field recording of kids playing at a park during the day by JohnnyBeCrafty
Hello, hello! Happy Spring! I'm here with another interview for you fine people. I had the opportunity to interview B'ellana Johannx aka Chloe Rose about their two upcoming chapbooks!
B'ellana Johannx's gender is Rilke’s dark god: a webbed scrim made of a thousand roots drinking in silence. Also known as Chloe Rose, she/they are a fat, queer, femme, non-binary womxn-of-color living with disabilities and their cats Franz and Pepper in Tacoma, WA. Rose/Johannx has been published in The Wanderer, Dream Pop, and Aspasiology, with Pushcart and Bettering American Poetry nominations henny, so watch out! Tweet them about conlangs, antifa, witchcraft, and drag names @llanaandsuchas. If you are a faggot, you are her/their kin and they love you. May the peace of the Goddess and God be upon you. #SMIB
B'ellana's website
B'ellana's Twitter
Writers, books, ideas, musicians mentioned:
- BBC News reporting on Fatbergs
- Cruising Utopia and Disidentifications by José Esteban Muñoz
- Raquel Salas Rivera
- Kolby Harvey
- In a Queer Time and Place by Jack Halberstam
- blackbox of butterfly goo
- Never Angeline Nørth, aka , aka Møss Høpe Ångel, fka Moss Angel the Undying, fka Moss Angel Witchmonstr, fka Sara June Woods, fka Sara Woods
- Infancy Gospel of Thomas
- Epimemetics / cultural mimetics: This Wired article from the 90s and also the more contemporary: Thomas Hobson and Kaajal Modi, “Communist Imaginaries and Queer Futures: Memes as Sites of Collective Imagination” coming soon as part of this anthology
- Beast Meridian
- while they sleep (under the bed another country) by Raquel Salas Rivera
- Cruel Fiction by Wendy Trevino
- Big Lucks
- Dream Pop
- Femmescapes zine
- The Faggots and their Friends between Revolutions by Larry Mitchell
- Sea-Witch by Never Angeline North
- Lizzo
- listicle about BLACKPINK
"The Sound of Waves Breaking" is titled "Ghost Merkel Beat" by stanrams and made me laugh my ass off.
This episode was edited and media managed by Mitchel Davidovitz
I'm back! Hello! I got to talk with Andrea Abi-Karam this time, and I had a blast catching up with them about their latest book "EXTRATRANSMISSION."
Andrea Abi-Karam is an arab-american genderqueer punk poet-performer cyborg, writing on the art of killing bros, the intricacies of cyborg bodies, trauma & delayed healing. Their chapbook, THE AFTERMATH (Commune Editions, 2016), attempts to queer Fanon’s vision of how poetry fails to inspire revolution. Simone White selected their second assemblage, Villainy for forthcoming publication with Les Figues. They toured with Sister Spit March 2018 & are hype to live in New York. EXTRATRANSMISSION [Kelsey Street Press, 2019] is their first book.
- Andrea's Website
- Andrea's Twitter
- Spray Tan's bandcamp
- Rob Halpern's Music for Porn
- Jennifer Terry's "Significant Injury:War, Medicine, and Empire in Claudia's Case" (Andrea didn't specifically name this paper, but I felt it was relevant).
- Jasbir Puar's Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times
- Sister Spit Tour 2018
- Equine Therapy for Military Veterans
- Nightboat Books
- Jasmin Gibson Don't Let Them See Me Like This
- Wendy Travino's Cruel Fiction
- Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore's Sketchtasy
This episode's editor and social media manager was Mitchel Davidovitz.
The "Sound of Waves Breaking" was Spray Tan's "SOLOSLUT."
This month I got to talk to June Gehringer about her latest book. June Gehringer is the author of "I Love You It Looks Like Rain" (Be About It 2017), and "I Don't Write About Race" (Civil Coping Mechanisms 2018), the latter of which was the winner of Civil Coping Mechanisms's 2017 Mainline contest. She lives in Philadelphia and has more crushes than she can count. She tweets about it @june_gehringer, and if you're a press interested in her next book you can reach her at gehringercat@gmail.com .
She's also an editor over at tenderness lit.
I Don't Write About Race can be purchased here.
Writers, presses, musicians mentioned in the show:
- Peyton Burgess
- Danez Smith
- Prairie M. Faul
- Sung Yim
- Naadeyah Haseeb
- glo worm press
- EVIL MTN
- jayy dodd
- p.e. garcia
- Alexandra Naughton
- Mitski
- Kristin Chang
- Hanif Abburraqib
- The Wanderer
- Zack Blackwood
Editor and Social Media Manager: Mitchel Davidovitz
The Sound of Waves Breaking
In this episode I got to speak to Chase Berggrun about their new book R E D (Birds, LLC, 2018). Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in POETRY, Pinwheel, PEN Poetry Series, Sixth Finch, Diagram, The Offing, Prelude, Beloit Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. They received their MFA from New York University. They are Poetry Editor at Big Lucks.
Chase's website
Chase's Twitter
Go Buy R E D
List of things and people mentioned in this episode:
- Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula
- Dodie Bellamy’s The Letters of Mina Harker
- Cathy Park Hong essay: “Delusion of Whiteness in the Avant-Garde”
- Joey De Jesus essay: “Goldsmith, Conceptualism & the Half-baked Rationalization of White Idiocy”
- Solamz Sharif essay “The Near Transitive Properties of the Political and Poetical: Erasure”
- Solmaz Sharif’s LOOK
- Matt Rasmussen’s Black Aperture
- Jos Charles’ feeld
- George Abraham: al youm: for yesterday & her inherited traumas
- Gala Mukomolova’s One Above, One Below: Positions and Lamentations
- Leslie Jameson’s The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath
- Tommy Pico’s podcasts Food 4 Thot and Junk
- The Parent Trap starring Lindsay Lohan and Lindsay Lohan
- Spongebob asexually reproducing
Editor and Social Media Manager: Mitchel Davidovitz
Sound of Waves Breaking
This month I got to talk with Luis Lopez-Maldonado. Prepare yourself, this episode gets a little more sexy than usual. Luis is a Xicanx poeta, playwright, dancer, choreographer, and educator. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California Riverside in Creative Writing and Dance. His poetry has been seen in The American Poetry Review, Foglifter, The Packinghouse Review, Public Pool, and Spillway, among many others. He also earned a Master of Arts degree in Dance from Florida State University, and a Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing from the University of Notre Dame. He is currently a co-founder and editor at The Brillantina Project.
- Luis' website
- Luis' Twitter
- Luis is on Instagram @luis.lopezmaldonado
- The Artist is Present
- Wicked
Follow Waves Breaking on Twitter at @WavesBreakPod, or email at wavesbreakingshow@gmail.com
Editor and Social Media Manager: Mitchel Davidovitz
The Sound of Waves Breaking: LA/Orange County Metro
This month I got to chat with Kayleb Rae Candrilli. Kayleb is author of "What Runs Over," winner of the 2016 Pamet River Prize, with YesYes Books. "What Runs Over" is a 2017 Lambda Literary finalist for Transgender Poetry. Candrilli is published or forthcoming in Puerto del Sol, Booth, RHINO, Cream City Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, Adroit, Bettering American Poetry, Boaat Press, Vinyl, CutBank, Muzzle, New Orleans Review, and many others.
They have served as the nonfiction editor of the Black Warrior Review and as a feature editor for NANO Fiction. They are now an Assistant Poetry Editor for Boaat Press. In 2015, Candrilli was a Lambda Literary Emerging Fellow in Nonfiction, and again in 2017 as a fellow in poetry. Kayleb is a Best of the Net winner and has been nominated for Pushcart Prizes (in prose and poetry) and for Best New Poets. They were also a 2017 recipient of a Leeway Art and Change Grant.
Authors and music mentioned in this episode:
- Kayleb's website: https://www.krcandrilli.com
Purchase "What Runs Over" here: https://www.yesyesbooks.com/product-page/what-runs-over-by-kayleb-rae-candrilli - Nabila Lovelace "Sons of Achilles" https://www.yesyesbooks.com/product-page/sons-of-achilles-by-nabila-lovelace
- Shaelyn Smith "The Leftovers" http://www.csupoetrycenter.com/books/the-leftovers
- Jamie Mortara "GOOD MORNING AMERICA I'M HUNGRY AND ON FIRE" https://www.yesyesbooks.com/product-page/good-morning-america-i-am-hungry-and-on-fire-by-jamie-mortara
- Chase Berggrun "R E D" http://www.birdsllc.com/catalog/red
- Lynette Reeman: https://www.linettereeman.net
- Post-ironic bummer pop band Coping Skills: https://copingskills.bandcamp.com/album/worst-new-music
- Swedish EDM Kasbo: https://www.edmsauce.com/tag/kasbo/
The Sound of Waves Breaking is here: https://freesound.org/people/kickhat/sounds/328969/
This episode is edited by Mitchel Davidovitz.
Mitchel Davidovitz is also the Social Media Manager.
You can contact Avren on twitter @WavesBreakPod, and on Facebook at "Waves Breaking Podcast," and through email wavesbreakingshow@gmail.com.
This month(ish) I got to interview Nat Raha! Nat Raha is a poet and trans / queer activist, living in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her poetry includes two collections countersonnets (Contraband Books, 2013) and Octet (Veer Books, 2010); and numerous pamphlets including ‘de/compositions’ (Enjoy Your Homes Press, 2017), '£/€xtinctions' (sociopathetic distro, 2017), '[of sirens / body & faultlines]' (Veer Books, 2015), 'radio / threat' (sociopathetic distro, 2014) and 'mute exterior intimate' (Oystercatcher Press, 2013). She's performed and published her work internationally. Nat co-edited the Radical Transfeminism zine, and is currently finishing PhD in on queer Marxism and contemporary poetry at the University of Sussex.
http://sociodistro.tumblr.com (if you go here, there's pdfs of £/€xtinctions, the first edition '[of sirens...], and 'radio/threat')
http://sociopatheticsemaphores.blogspot.com
Ideas and writers discussed in this episode:
- Psychogeography
- Situationism
- Guy Debord
- Ivan Chtcheglov
- Sonic Youth
- My Bloody Valentine
- early Austerity 2011 England: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_government_austerity_programme
- The New York School
- Sean Bonney "The Commons"
- Nat Raha's essay "Transfeminine Brokenness, Radical Transfeminism" https://read.dukeupress.edu/south-atlantic-quarterly/article/116/3/632/129746/Transfeminine-Brokenness-Radical-Transfeminism
- Lauren Berlant's idea of "slow death" found in her book "Cruel Optimism"
- Verity Spott, "Click Away Close Door Say" http://www.contrabandbooks.co.uk/verity-spott/
- Linus Slug, Mendoza, Tommy Peeps, Insect Librarian: ninerrors http://ninerrors.blogspot.com
- Jay Bernard: http://www.poetryinternationalweb.net/pi/site/poet/item/19397/29/Jay-Bernard
- Nisha Ramayya
- Frances Kruk
- Vahni Capildeo, Measures of Expatriation
This episode was edited and social media managed by Mitchel Davidovitz
The Sound of Waves Breaking is from CadereSounds, freesound.org
This month I got to speak with Chely Lima and Margaret Randall, the translator for his new collection of poetry What the Werewolf Told Them/ Le que los dijo el licantropo.
Chely Lima is a queer Cuban-American writer who has published numerous books (poetry, novel, short story, theater, literature for children) in his country of origin, and also in Spain, United States, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador. Some of these books are the novels Lucrecia quiere decir perfidia (2015), Triángulos mágicos (2014) and Confesiones nocturnas (1994), as well as the poetry books Zona de silencio (2004), Discurso de la amante (2013), and Lo que les dijo el licántropo / What the Werewolf told them (2017). His texts have been translated into English, French, Portuguese, German, Italian, Russian, Czech and Esperanto, and numerous selections and anthologies of literature from various parts of the world collect samples of his work.
Listeners can use the code WAVES for a 20% on ANY OS book directly through our online store, here: https://squareup.com/store/the-operating-system/
Books, authors, and ideas mentioned in this episode:
- Chely Lima's blog
- What the Werewolf Told Them/ Lo que los dijo el licantropo
- Margaret Randall's website
- The Operating System
- Jungian concept of the shadow
- An article about androgyny and shamanism, though I would exercise caution around its terminology, which might be harmful for non-binary POC folks in its use of the term "third gender"
- Viracocha and Dionysus
Alberto Serret Editing and Social Media Management mangaed by none other than Mitchel Davidovitz Sound of Waves Breaking: Wolves in Finland
This month I had the opportunity to interview H. Melt about the anthology they've just edited: Subject to Change: Trans Poetry & Conversation. H. Melt is a poet, activist, and educator whose work proudly celebrates Chicago’s queer and trans communities. Their writing has appeared many places including In These Times, The Offing, and Them, the first trans literary journal in the United States. They are the author of The Plural, The Blurring and editor of Subject to Change: Trans Poetry & Conversation. Lambda Literary awarded them the Judith A. Markowitz Award for Emerging LGBTQ Writers and they've been named to Newcity's Lit 50 list, as well as Windy City Times' 30 under 30. H. Melt co-leads Queeriosity at Young Chicago Authors and works at Women & Children First, Chicago’s feminist bookstore. Writers, books and artists mentioned in this episode: Subject to Change anthology Joshua Jennifer Espinoza Christopher Soto AKA Loma Beyza Ozer Cameron Awkward-Rich Kay Ulanday Barrett Jay Besemer KOKUMO Troubling the Line anthology H. Melt's book The Plural, The Blurring H. Melt's website Women and Children First Bookstore Jesse Jacobs' work Crawl Space Sound of Waves Breaking: butter melting in a pan Editing and Marketing by: Mitchel Davidovitz WE HAVE SOCIAL MEDIA: check out our new facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/WavesBreakPod/ and our new Twitter account at @WavesBreakPod You can, of course, always reach me at wavesbreakingshow@gmail.com
This month, I had the pleasure of meeting Venus Selenite in person while she started her first leg of her #RehabYearTour. Venus is a Bettering American Poetry 2016 nominee, a 2017 Pink Door Fellow, and one of the most notable trans women of color interdisciplinary artists in the United States. She is the author of two books: trigger and the fire been here. She lives in Washington, D.C. and the internet.
- Venus's website
- Venus's Patreon
- trigger
- The Fire Been Here
- James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
- Nameless Woman anthology
- Goddess X
- KOKUMỌ
- J Mase III
- Jamie Berrout
- Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi
-
- Her new book: For Black Trans Girls Who Gotta Cuss a Motherfucker Out When Snatching an Edge Ain't Enough
- Jayy Dodd
-
- Their new book Mannish Tongues
- Also, shameless plug for my interview with them back on Episode 10
- What you can do to support trans artists of color (thread)
The Sound of Waves Breaking is by Chris Lynn, a recording of voices in Washington, D.C. near the Jefferson Memorial. The editor is Mitchel Davidovitz, and the show is produced by me.
This month I speak with Raquel Salas Rivera from their residence in Puerto Rico.
Raquel Salas Rivera es una poeta, traductora, ensayista y educadora puertorriqueña que vive y trabaja en Filadelfia. Ha publicado poemas, traducciones y ensayos en numerosas revistas y antologías; también ha publicado cuatro libros de poesía: Caneca de anhelos turbios (2011), oropel/tinsel (2016), huequitos/holies (2016) y tierra intermitente (2017). En el 2018, publicará el libro lo terciario/the tertiary con Timeless, Infinite Light. Actualmente, es editora contribuyente y traductora para The Wanderer. Si para Roque Dalton no existe revolución sin poesía, para Raquel no existe poesía sin Puerto Rico. Puedes aprender más sobre su trabajo si visitas raquelsalasrivera.com.
Raquel Salas Rivera is a Puerto Rican poet, translator, essayist, and educator living and working in Philadelphia. They have published poetry, translations, and essays in numerous anthologies and journals, and as well as four poetry books: Caneca de anhelos turbios (2011), oropel/tinsel (2016), huequitos/holies (2016), and tierra intermitente (2017). In 2018, Timeless, Infinite Light will publish their fifth book, lo terciario/the tertiary. Currently, they are a Contributing Editor at The Wanderer. If for Roque Dalton there is no revolution without poetry, for Raquel there is no poetry without Puerto Rico. You can find out more about their work at raquelsalasrivera.com.
Artists and other things mentioned in this month's episode
- The Wanderer
- César Vallejo
- Ángelamaría Dávila
- Nestor Perlongher
- Lezama Lima
- Severo Sarduy
- Julia de Burgos
- Manuel Ramos Otero
- Los nadaístas
- Quitapon beer
- Pedro Scaron’s El Capital
- PROMESA
- Colette Arrand
- Chloe Rose
- jayy dodd
- RE Katz
- Gaddiel Francisco Ruiz Rivera
- Caleb David Acevedo
- John Paul Kirkland
- Gegman Lee
- Mara Pastor
- Vara Liceaga
- Raquel Albarrán
- Xaviar Valcarcel
- Abdiel Echevarría
- Yolanda Arroyo
- Nicole Delgado
- Charles Theonia
- Jasmine Gibson
- Marc Anthony Richardson (Raquel notes that Year of the Rat was great)
- Angel Dominguez
- Moss Angel Witchmonstr
- Ginger Ko
- Tatiana Luboviski-Acosta
- Gabriel Ojeda Sague
- Kirwyn Sutherland
- CA Conrad
- Sophie Robinson
- José Raúl González (Gallego)
This episode was edited by Mitchel Davidovitz and produced by me.
The Sound of Waves Breaking is of the coquí hanging out at night, found on freesound.org
I got to talk on the phone with poet Kenyatta JP Garcia and their most recent collection Slow Living.
Kenyatta JP Garcia is the author of They Say, Slow Living and ROBOT. JP was raised in Brooklyn but currently resides in Albany, N.Y. where they received degrees in English and linguistics. They are an editor at both Rigorous and Five 2 One Literary Magazine. In a past life, they were a cook for about a dozen years. In this modern incarnation, they get paid to put boxes on shelves by night and by day they read comics, pine, worry, and attempt to craft something worth reading.
- JP's Website
- Slow Living
- ROBOT: The Waste Land Reimagined
- Yawning on the Sands
- Frank O'Hara
- Oscar Wilde
- Jean Genet
- Alice Notley
- an article about queer death in the media, not the article JP mentioned, but hopefully helps some
- Michael Sikkemma
- Danielle Pafunda
- Mark Lamoureux
- H.D.'s Helen in Egypt
- Moss Angel Witchmonstr
- Jean Toomer's Cane
- Here by Richard McGuire (not Bill Kartalopoulos like I said in the episode!!)
- Hank Williams Sr.
- Joy Division
- Brooklyn Radio's History of Hip-hop
- Johnny Cash & Family "Will the Circle Be Unbroken"
- Claes Oldenburg
- Andy Warhol
- If you can, check out Dr. Schoerke's essay, "The Divided Heart," specifically examines the sentimentality-vs-modernism forced schism more clearly than how I articulated it
In this interview, I get to talk IN-PERSON with Julian Shendelman about his new chapbook, Dead Dad Club (Nomadic Press, 2017).
Julian Shendelman has a weird looking dog (part fawn, part fruit bat) and a nice Jewish boyfriend. After 10 years of living in Oakland, where he was an organizer for the Bay Area Trans Writers Workshop, Julian is relocating to Philadelphia with hopes of having more time to write. He was a 2016 Pushcart nominated poet for his piece in Bat City Review, and won a Literary Death Match with a true story about queer punk cannibalism. His first published chapbook, “Dead Dad Club,” was released by Nomadic Press in March of this year.
Poets and groups mentioned in this episode:
Cam Awkward-Rich (check out the interview I did with Cam here)
Zach Ozma
Thel Seraphim
Bay Area Trans Writers Workshop (if you're in the area, not-cisgender and not a jerk, please come!)
"Welcome to the Dead Dads Club" scene in Gray's Anatomy
Seahorse by Natasha Dennerstein
Quiéreme by Juliana Delgado Lopera
Timeless Infinite Light (sign up for a subscription!)
This month I had the pleasure of interviewing Ching-In about their recent publication, recombinant. We got to talk about archive, language, history, and gender.
Ching-In Chen is the author of The Heart's Traffic (Arktoi Books) and recombinant (Kelsey Street Press) and co-editor of The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities (South End Press; AK Press) and Here is a Pen: an Anthology of West Coast Kundiman Poets (Achiote Press). A Kundiman, Lambda, Watering Hole and Callaloo Fellow, they are part of the Macondo and Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation writing communities. Their work has appeared in The Best American Experimental Writing, The &NOW Awards 3: The Best Innovative Writing, and Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics. They are a senior editor of The Conversant and poetry editor of the Texas Review.They serve on the Executive Board of Thinking Its Presence: Race, Advocacy, Solidarity in the Arts as the Director of Membership and Social Media. www.chinginchen.com
Have a listen, spread the word!
Artists and works mentioned in this episode:
- Ching-In's book recombinant
- Ching-In's book The Heart's Traffic
- The Peabody Essex Museum's collected artifacts of the basket and fan
- Milwaukee lynch mob information
- Cheng Chui Ping aka "Sister Ping"
- Golden Venture Disaster
- Michael Lin's artwork at Peabody Essex Museum
- I Was Born with Two Tongues
- Tyehimba Jess's Olio
- Syncopated Sonnets
- Kunidman
- Cathy Linh Che
- Wo Chan
- Jai Arun Ravine
- Trish Salah
- conference: Thinking as Presence, creative writing, race and the arts. CFS!
The Sound of Waves Breaking this week is from Jon Jang and the Pan-Asian Arkestra's "Night in Tunisia," just in case you're curious. This episode was edited by Mitchel Davidovitz, whose sound project you can find here on bandcamp
While I was on the East Coast to attend/table AWP, Tyler Vile and I got the chance to meet up with each other in D.C.'s Green Lantern bar to talk poetry and punk. The photo for this month's episode was taken just after our interview.
Tyler Vile is a writer, performer, and activist from Baltimore, MD whose novel-in-verse, Never Coming Home, is available on Topside Press. She is a member of the Baltimore Transgender Alliance leadership team and the vocalist in a punk band called Anti-Androgen. Her interactive poetry zine, Hassidic Witch Murderer is available on her website. She aspires to one day become the world’s greatest transsexual yenta.
Artists/Bands Mentioned in the show:
- Tyler's Wesbite
- Never Coming Home
- Hassidic Witch Murderer
- Anti-Androgen's bandcamp
- Cat Fitzpatrick
- Punk Globe
- Cpunk or CripplePunk movement
- the Sidebar
- Media Pigs
- the Germs
- Jayne County
- Ginger Coyote
- Operation Ivy
- The Fags
- Raped (UK band)
- Minor Threat
- Black Flag
- Marginal Man
- Government Issue
- John Stabb
- John Berry
- The Slickee Boys
- Iron Cross
- the Twats
- Mischief Brew
- Bad Brains
- G.L.O.S.S.
- Venus Selenite
- Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi
- The Baltimore Transgender Alliance
- KOKUMỌ
- Kay Ulanday Barrett
The Sound of Waves Breaking this week was a demo version of "FUCK THE WOLVES" by Anti-Androgen.
It was such a gift to speak with emerging-talent Aristilde Kirby for this month's episode! Aristilde Kirby is a twenty-five year old lesbian trans-woman poet and songsmith originally from Bronx, NY, but now resides from Carrollton, GA. She is a UGA Master Gardener. She is working on a chapbook entitled [bitácora total bust] and an EP entitled [LA POESÍA DEL CANTE JONDO], which will be out sometime in future recent history, hopefully.
Authors, artists, and books mentioned in this episode:
- Aris's twitter account
- Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge
- Jamie Berrout's translation of Esdras Parra's Este suelo secreto/ To Be Human Once More
- Frederico Garcia Lorca's Poema del cante jondo
- Trans Women Writer's Collective website
- Kay Gabriel's "Untranslating Gender in Trish Salah's Lyric Sexology Vol. 1"
- The name of the woman whose name escaped Aris's mind was we were talking about Aris's recent publication was Ralayzia Taylor. You can donate to her YouCaring for her to help cover medical expenses, food, and secure housing.
- Vetch Journal
- Nina Chaubal has been released! You can still help her cover lawyer fees!
- Peachy Parade / ピーチー・パレード
- Allen Thomas Void Scrolls I
- Frida Palacios
- No Name's Telefone
- Mitski's Puberty 2
The Sound of Waves Breaking is Aris's poetic soundscape "Opaline Y Hyalite" which you can find here at her bandcamp. Editing was done by Mitchel Davidovitz.
This month’s interview is with none other than Jayy Dodd! In this episode we talk about their work in other genres of art and critique, compensation for labor, and their newest chapbook, [sugar in the tank].
[sugar in the tank] can be found here
Jayy Dodd’s website
“All my exes look like mass murderers”
Jayy as an editor
Jayy as a graphic designer
Jayy as Social Media manager
Donate to Jayy for their work here and here
Georgina Arroyo’s website
The Shade Journal, issue 1
Langston Hughes’ “I, Too”
“Hyel’s Zumbi”
Tafisha A. Edwards
Morgan Parker
Danez Smith
Joshua Jennifer Espinoza
Luther Hughes
The Sound of Waves Breaking is Lucille Clifton reading her work “blessing the boats,” a poem I return to often in this post-election climate.
I am so honored to get to speak with Vita E. Cleveland about her recent chapbook Dedications. The conversation, of course, wanders toward her percussion expertise, musings on art's intersection with activism, slut shaming in activist circles, and more.
Notes of Poets Mentioned in this episode: Vita E's tumblr Vita E's youtube Vita's new ebook, Dedications Saul Williams
J Mase III Regie Cabico Kavindu Ade awQward Talent Agency TaneshaNicole Tyler's performance at TED Talk Timothy DuWhite CeCe McDonald giving a talk at the Humanist Hall Dane Figueroa Edidi Ashleigh Shackelford Capturing Fire 2016
Kay Barrett Kit Yan Venus Selenite Linette Reeman Nik Moreno Edited by: Mitchel Davidovitz, whose experimental audio work you can check out at his bandcamp. "The Sounds of Waves Breaking" was Vita E's drum solo "Clave." You can listen to the entirety of "Clave" at her SoundCloud page. Transcripts forthcoming.
In this month's episode, Jay Besemer and I talk about his recent book, Chelate, along with other topics, including: living with chronic illness, our relationship with nature, sci-fi, poetry comics, and time.
Books and things mentioned in this episode:
- Jay's Tumblr
- Samuel Delany's Babel-17
- Petra Kuppers' essay in Transgender Studies Quarterly
- Oliver Baez Bendorf's poetry comics
- Clover manga
- Bianca Stone's poetry comics
- Warren Craghead III's poetry comics
Theme Music is by Bahati Kiro
Music throughout is by Chris Zorn
Transcripts forthcoming from Amir Rabiyah
The Sound of Waves Breaking is the ambient noise of Terok Nor from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
In this episode I talk with Cameron Awkward-Rich about his approaches to poetry and theory, and the poetry in his new book Sympathetic Little Monster.
Cameron has published poems in The Journal, cream city review, Muzzle Magazine, Hobart, The Seattle Review, The Offing and elsewhere. He is a Cave Canem Fellow, a poetry editor at Muzzle Magazine, and currently a doctoral candidate in Modern Thought & Literature at Stanford University. Cam is the author of the chapbook Transit (Button Poetry, 2015) and his debut collection, Sympathetic Little Monster, was published by Ricochet Editions in 2016.
Go check out Sympathetic Little Monster, its a wonderful collection.
Writers who were mentioned in the shout outs:
James Baldwin's essay "Here Be Monsters"
Aracelis Girmay
Ari Banias
Danez Smith
Franny Choi
Sam Sax
Justin Phillip Reed
Fatimah Asghar
Aziza Barnes
Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib
The Sound of Waves Breaking this week is the sound of opening an attic, as found on freesound.org
Jai Arun Ravine talks to me about their newest book, The Romance of Siam, just released from Timeless, Infinite Light. We talk about their use of humor in critiquing orientalism, the tourist industry in Thailand, and their process as an interdisciplinary artist.
The sound of waves breaking is "Once in a Lifetime," the theme song for Thailand's tourism campaign.
Jai’s website: http://jaiarunravine.com/
The Romance of Siam: http://timelessinfinitelight.com/collections/frontpage/products/romance-of-siam
Jai’s performance piece from 2010, “TOMBOIGATOEYMANGO”: https://vimeo.com/15429089
Once in a Lifetime Commercial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5_zFBH4wqU
Ambient Asian Space: noodlecroons.tumblr.com
Jo Ann Wasserman’s book of sestinas, “The Escape”: http://www.futurepoem.com/books/the-escape
Gabriel Ojeda-Sague & Jai Arun Ravine in conversation about adjacency: https://medium.com/drunken-boat/a-conversation-between-gabriel-ojeda-sague-and-jai-arun-ravine-fea4b9c44842#.cgsw305tg
Gabriel’s book: http://timelessinfinitelight.com/products/oil-and-candle
Jim Thompson, the Unsolved Mystery: https://www.amazon.com/Jim-Thompson-Unsolved-William-Warren/dp/9813018828
Information about W. Somerset Maugham in Thailand: http://padraigrooney.com/journalism/a_literary_journey_through_thailand.html
In this episode I get to talk to Zoe Tuck in a coffee shop in Oakland. We discuss speculative fiction, the second wave feminism she navigated during her coming of age years, spirituality, trans identities and collective memory, and more.
Zoe's website is here: zoetuck.com and you can order Terror Matrix from TIL here: http://timelessinfinitelight.com/products/zoe-tuck-br-terror-matrix
Other writers and thinkers brought up in this show:
David Antin: http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/188685/talmudic-improv-david-antin
Interview that Tom Leger was part that I referenced: http://www.lambdaliterary.org/interviews/09/17/three-umpires-walk-into-a-bar-transgender-authors-and-editors-on-transgender-literature/
"What is Bay Area Poetry" Podcast: https://soundcloud.com/heonversant
Zoe’s review of Archipelago: http://www.spdbooks.org/pages/staff-picks/default.aspx
Connie Willis: http://www.tor.com/2015/06/24/where-to-start-with-the-works-of-connie-willis/
Ursula K. Le Guinn: http://www.ursulakleguin.com/
Laura Moriarty: http://www.spdbooks.org/Producte/1891190245/ultravioleta.aspx
Alice Notley: http://www.amazon.com/Descent-Alette-Penguin-Poets/dp/0140587640
Zach Ozma: http://cargocollective.com/zachozma
bell hooks on arts education and visual politics: http://www.amazon.com/Art-My-Mind-Visual-Politics/dp/1565842634
In this episode I have the pleasure of interviewing the current editors of Vetch: A Magazine of Trans Poetry and Poetics: Kay Gabriel, Stephen Ira, Liam O'Brien and Rylee Lyman. We talk about their approaches to putting the journal together, their insights into transgender poetics, and touch on the archival of transgender/gender-variant art.
There's a huge reading/viewing list for this episode. Explore all the trans art!
- Vetch (obviously!) http://vetchpoetry.co.vu/
- Lilith Latini http://topsidepress.com/author/lilith-latini/
- Merrit K’s podcast http://woodlandsecrets.co/ and DBZ fanzine Badman: http://pinebark.tumblr.com/post/131704442142/badman-a-dragon-ball-zine and INTERNET MURDER REVENGE FANTASY https://a-dire-fawn.itch.io/imrf
- Trace Peterson http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/trace-peterson succubus in my pocket can be purchased here: http://eoagh.com/?p=2486
- Cat Fitzpatrick http://topsidepress.com/author/cat-fitzpatrick/
- Kay Gabriel’s essay on Trish Salah’s Lyric Sexology Vol. 1 https://www.academia.edu/22511089/Untranslating_Gender_in_Trish_Salahs_Lyric_Sexology_Vol._1 which will soon be released in TSQ*: https://www.dukeupress.edu/TSQ-Transgender-Studies-Quarterly
- Aristilde Kirby https://twitter.com/motjustine
- Maxe Crandall https://maxecrandall.com/
- Trish Salah http://www.thefeministwire.com/2013/12/3-poems-by-trish-salah/
- Aiyanna Maracle (who just recently passed away): http://indianacts.gruntarchives.org/video-day-1-keynote-panel-1.html http://nomorepotlucks.org/site/death-in-the-shadow-of-the-umbrella-aiyyana-maracle/
- Donate to help archive Aiyyana’s work here: https://www.gofundme.com/2bwu25ks
- Mirha-Soleil Ross http://zagria.blogspot.com/2014/09/mirha-soleil-ross-1969-sex-worker.html#.Vy0US_krI2w
- Xanthra Phillipa MacKay http://www.citr.ca/2015/11/20/from-the-citr-archives-17-64288/
- Manuel Arturo Abreu’s essay Transtrender: A Meditation on Gender as a Racial Construct http://blog.newhive.com/transtrender-a-meditation-on-gender-as-a-racial-construct/
- Hal Schrieve https://twitter.com/hal_schrieve
The Sound of Waves Breaking for this episode is a clip from Season 4 of DBZ "Goku's Special Technique."
In this interview I get a chance to talk with Joy Ladin. We talk about her latest book Impersonation, how her relationship to poetic language changed as she transitioned, the use of persona in poetry, the early Modernists, and trends in trans & gender-variant poetry.
Joy's website is: joyladin.com. GO BUY IMPERSONATION IT'S GREAT.
Email me at: wavesbreakingshow@gmail.com
Theme music by Bahati Kiro, transition music by Chris Zorn.
The Sound of Waves Breaking is from the Nasa's new collection of space sounds up on Soundcloud. It's Chorus Radio waves from within Earth's atmosphere.
Today's show features a conversation between Loma and me about the government influence on poetry, the boundaries of a poem between other objects and being, poetry & activism, struggling with how to write poetry about domestic abuse, fearlessness, and more.
Poets & essays mentioned in this episode:
Juliana Spahr and her influential essay on Contemporary Poetry and Its Nationalisms: ( http://www.academia.edu/9079433/Contemporary_US_Poetry_and_Its_Nationalisms )
Loma's website ( christophersoto-poet.com )
Dark Matter: ( http://www.darkmatterpoetry.com/ )
Joshua Jennifer Espinoza: ( http://joshuajenniferespinoza.com/ )
Stephanie Burt ( http://www.closecallswithnonsense.com/category/stephanie/ )
TC Tolbert ( http://www.tctolbert.com/ )
Julian T. Brolaski ( http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/julian-brolaski )
In this interview I am in conversation with poet and activist Amir Rabiyah. This is the first episode of "Waves Breaing," a podcast in which I, a lonesome transbaby, interview my contemporaries in trans and genderqueer poetry.
Help out Aurora Levins Morales at http://www.littlevehicleforchange.org/
and Amir Rabiyah's Hambidge Residency at https://www.gofundme.com/amirgoestohambidge