Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. His poetry has been published in Muzzle, Vinyl, PEN American, and various other journals. His essays and music criticism have been published in The FADER, Pitchfork, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. Hanif’s newest release, There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension (Random House, 2024) is a poignant, personal reflection on basketball, life, and home and a New York Times bestseller.

Commonplace Podcast

Episode 127: Hanif Abdurraqib with Stuti Sharma

D. A. Powell teaches at University of San Francisco. His books include Repast, Chronic and Useless Landscape or a Guide for Boys, all published by Graywolf Press. He is also the author of chapbooks Atlas T and Low Hanging Fruit. He lives in San Francisco.

Episode 126: D. A. Powell

Books by Rachel ZuckerThe Poetics of Wrongness (Wave Poetry, 2023) SoundMachine (Wave Poetry, 2019) The Pedestrians (Wave Poetry, 2014) MOTHERs (2014) Museum of Accidents (Wave Poetry, 2009) The Bad Wife Handbook (Wesleyan University Press, 2007)The Last Clear Narrative (2004) Eating in the Underworld (2003) Books by Rachel Zucker and Arielle GreenbergHome/birth: A Poemic (2011) Starting Today: 100 Poems for Obama’s First 100 Days (University of Iowa Press, 2010)Women Poets on Mentorship: Efforts and Affections (University of Iowa Press, 2008) Also ReferencedRobert HassAlice NotleyBernadette MayerToi DerricotteAlicia OstrikerArielle GreenbergMarina AbramovićJorie GrahamIna May GaskinBrenda HillmanAdrienne RichDorothea LangeRobert FrankSally MannFrank O’HaraAllen GinsbergJames SchuylerTillie OlsenMany thanks to the English Department at UC Berkeley, The Bagley Wright Poetry Lecture Series and the BWLS Podcast, Ellen Welcker, Heidi Broadhead, Charlie Wright and everyone at Wave Books. Here is a longer list of acknowledgments and a partial list of referenced sources for Rachel’s lectures.Commonplace has no institutional or corporate affiliation and is made possible by you, our listeners! Support Commonplace by joining the Commonplace Book Club: https://www.patreon.com/commonplacepodcast

Episode 125: The Poetics of Motherhood

Hafizah Augustus Geter is a Nigerian-American poet, writer, and literary agent born in Zaria, Nigeria, and raised in Akron, Ohio, and Columbia, South Carolina. Her debut memoir, The Black Period: On Personhood, Race & Origin, (Random House, 2022) is winner of the 2023 PEN Open Book Award, winner of a  2023 Lammy Award in LGBTQ+ Nonfiction from Lambda Literary, a New Yorker Magazine Best Book of 2022, a Good Morning America Anticipated Book, an Amazon's Best of the Month Editor's Pick, and a finalist for the 2023 Chautauqua Prize.  Called "one of 2020's buzziest poets" by Marie Claire, Hafizah is also the author of the debut poetry collection Un-American from Wesleyan University Press (September 2020), received a Starred Review from Publisher's Weekly. It was nominated for a 2021 NAACP Image Award, a finalist for the 2021 PEN Open Book Award, and longlisted for the 2021 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize.Hafizah’s writing has appeared in Harper's Bazaar, The New Yorker, Academy of American Poet's Poem-A-Day, The Funambulist, Salon,  BOMB Magazine, The Believer, Paris Review, Longreads, Roxane Gay's GAY Magazine, Yale Review, Tin House, Boston Review, among others. Hafizah serves on the Brooklyn Literary Council and as the poetry committee co-chair for the Brooklyn Book Festival. She is a Cave Canem poetry fellow, a VONA/Voices nonfiction fellow, a Bread Loaf 2021 Katherine Bakeless nonfiction fellow, a 2018 92Y Women in Power Fellow, a 2024 Civitella Fellow, and the recipient of an Amy Award from Poets & Writers.Hafizah has taught writing at Columbia College Chicago, FIT, NYU's Writers in New York program, and in the MFA programs at Manhattanville College and Columbia University. She's previously worked at Cave Canem, Poets House, and PEN America, and served on the board of VIDA: Women in the Literary Arts. Hafizah holds a BA in English and economics from Clemson University; an MFA in poetry from Columbia College Chicago; and an MFA in nonfiction from New York University where she was an Axinn Fellow in Creative Narrative Nonfiction.Hafizah is a literary agent at Janklow & Nesbit where she represents a diverse range of literary fiction and narrative nonfiction writers. She lives with her wife in Brooklyn, New York where she is at work on several projects including WOMEN & WEATHER, as well as her second nonfiction project, BEING AROUND: ON LIVING, and a novel about supercontinents and migration.Books by Hafizah GeterThe Black Period (PRH, 2022)Un-American (Wesleyan University Press, 2020)Also Referenced: Gabrielle CivilJudy Grahn and Pat ParkerParul SehgalDiving into the Wreck writing workshop with Sarah DohrmannThe Velveteen Rabbit by Margery WilliamsMarcelo Hernandez Castillo’s Children of the LandMeander Spiral Explode by Jane AlisonOcean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly GorgeousSharon OldsEd RobersonJamia WilsonCamille RankineJSTORWar Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning by Chris HedgesWar Time: An Idea, Its History, Its Consequences by Mary L. DudziakHafizah Geter on Jean ValentineUzo UwealaToni MorrisonVoice Dream appDon’t Let Me Be Lonely by Claudia Rankine Tyrone GeterCharles W. WhiteJackson PollockWild by Cheryl StrayedWave: A Memoir by Sonali DeraniyagalaThe Case Against the Trauma Plot - New Yorker Article by Parul SehgalDick WolfGrub Street Center for Creative Writing

Episode 124: Reading Hafizah Augustus Geter’s The Black Period

Mary Ruefle is the author of many books, including The Book (Wave Books, 2023), Dunce (Wave Books, 2019), which was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize, longlisted for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics’ Circle Award, as well as a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize. She is also the author of My Private Property (Wave Books, 2016), Trances of the Blast (Wave Books, 2013), Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures (Wave Books, 2012), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, and Selected Poems (Wave Books, 2010), winner of the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. She has also published a comic book, Go Home and Go to Bed! (Pilot Books/Orange Table Comics, 2007), and is an erasure artist, whose treatments of nineteenth century texts have been exhibited in museums and galleries and published in A Little White Shadow (Wave Books, 2006). Ruefle is the recipient of numerous honors, including the Robert Creeley Award, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and a Whiting Award. She lives in Bennington, Vermont, where she serves as the state’s poet laureate.Books by Mary RuefleThe Book (Wave Books, 2023)Dunce (Wave Books, 2020)My Private Property (Wave Books, 2016)Trances of the Blast (Wave Books, 2013)Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures (Wave Books, 2012)Selected Poems (Wave Books, 2010)The Most of It (Wave Books, 2008)Go Home and Go to Bed! (Pilot Books/Orange Table Comics, 2007)A Little White Shadow (Wave Books, 2006)Indeed I Was Pleased with the World (Carnegie Mellon Press, 2007)The Adamant (University of Iowa Press, 1989)Also Referenced in the EpisodeAlso Referenced3 Days of Poetry hosted by Wave BooksReading with Rachel The Will-O’-the-Wisps Are in Town by Hans Christian AndersenDiane Wolkstein’s Hans Christan Anderson: Classic Stories“Pause” by Mary Ruefle Mary Ruefle on David Naimon’s Between the Covers (podcast)The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth GrahameMary Ruefle on Jordan Kisner‘s Thresholds (podcast)My Dinner with Andre (movie)MASS MOCA ‘s Tree LogicJames TurrellThe Art of Cruelty by Maggie NelsonBeing with Dying by Joan HalifaxBiosphere 2Spiral JettyAndy GoldsworthyIkkuyuHans Christian AndersenGutenberg BibleThe Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library Kobayashi Issa The Essential Haiku by Robert Hass

Episode 123: Mary Ruefle

Nicole Sealey was born in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, and raised in Apopka, Florida. She received an MFA from New York University and an MLA in Africana studies from the University of South Florida. Sealey is the author of Ordinary Beast (Ecco Press, 2017), which was a finalist for the PEN Open Book and Hurston/Wright Legacy Awards. Her chapbook, The Animal After Whom Other Animals are Named (Northwestern University Press, 2016), was the winner of the 2016 Drinking Gourd Chapbook Prize. In 2019, Sealey was named a 2019–20 Hodder Fellow at Princeton University. She has received fellowships and awards from CantoMundo, the Cave Canem Foundation, the American Academy in Rome, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Elizabeth George Foundation, among others.Books by Nicole SealeyThe Ferguson Report: An Erasure (2023)Ordinary Beast (2017)The Animal After Whom Other Animals Are Named: Poems (Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize) (2016) ContributionsBest New Poets 2011: 50 Poems from Emerging WritersWrote the introduction to Passion by June JordanReel Verse: Poems About the Movies (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets Series) (2019)Also Referenced in the EpisodeRoss Gay’s A Small Needful FactRobin Coste Lewis’s talk on ErasureMatthew RohrerChase Berggrun’s RED“Between the Lines” by Arianna Boussard-Reifel zong by M NourbeSeTracy K Smith’s poem “Declaration”Chase Berggrun’s RedReginald Bett’s Nicole Sealey’s “Clue” and her CentoThe Mis of My Kin by Janet HolmesJohn MurilloLil Noz XCharity for this episode: Furious Flower

Episode 122: Reading Nicole Sealey’s The Ferguson Report: an erasure

In this two-part episode, Rachel Zucker speaks with Ronaldo V. Wilson and Fred Moten about poetry as performance, influences and teachers, open field poetics, finding space for listeners and audience to feel welcome, how to define the limits—or lack thereof— of a book and, specifically, the performance they gave the night before at the Poetry Project at St Mark’s Church on May 24, 2023. Part one (ep 120) is a conversation about the performance. Part two (ep 121) is a recording of that performance.

Episode 121: Fred Moten and Ronaldo V. Wilson (part 2)

Episode 120: Fred Moten and Ronaldo V. Wilson (part 1)

Books by Eugenia LeighEugenia LeighBianca (Four Way Books, 2023)Blood, Sparrows and Sparrows (Four Way Books, 2014)Other Relevant LinksMike SakasegawaLikeWise FictionKeep the Channel Open on TwitterKeep the Channel Open on Insta Keep the Channel Open on YouTubeBio:Eugenia Leigh (she/her) is a Korean-American poet and the author of two collections of poetry, Bianca and Blood, Sparrows and Sparrows.Eugenia received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, where she was awarded the Thomas Lux Scholarship for her dedication to teaching, demonstrated through her writing workshops with incarcerated youths and with Brooklyn high school students.The recipient of fellowships and awards from Poets & Writers Magazine, Kundiman, the Asian American Literary Review, and elsewhere, Eugenia currently serves as a Poetry Editor at The Adroit Journal.Information and sign up for new class “Reading with Rachel”Please support Commonplace by becoming a patron here!

Episode 119: Eugenia Leigh's Bianca (KTCO feed drop)

Extra ResourcesBooks by Laurel SnyderThe Witch of Woodland (Walden Pond Press, 2023)Endlessly Ever After (Chronicle Books, 2022) Charlie & Mouse: Book 1 (Chronicle Books, 2019)Hungry Jim (Chronicle Books, 2019) My Jasper June (Walden Pond Press, 2019)Orphan Island (Walden Pond Press, 2018) Swan: The Life and Dance of Anna Pavlova (Chronicle Books, 2015)Camp Wonderful Wild (Two Lions, 2013)Up and Down the Scratchy Mountains (Yearling Books, 2010) Any Which Wall (Yearling Books, 2010) The Myth of the Simple Machines (No Tell Books, 2007)Half/Life: Jew-ish Tales from Interfaith Homes (Soft Skull Press, 2006)Also ReferencedMarvin BellGary Blankenburg (teacher at public high school in maryland)W.D. SnodgrassUTC University of ChattanoogaCatherine (Cathy) WagnerBradley PaulCarl SandburgTheodore RoethkeHamburg Inn No. 2James (Jim) GalvinGreg Brown’s Songs of Innocence and ExperienceTammy WynetteAnnals of OtorhinolaryngologyJane YolenEdward EagerRichard Nash, Softskull editorThisbe NissenIsaac BabelRobert CreeleySCBWI: The Society of Children’s Book Writers and IllustratorsVanderpump RulesEmily Hughes (illustrator for Charlie and Mouse)Jason IsbellBio:Laurel Snyder is the author of eight novels for children, including, most recently The Witch of Woodland, My Jasper June, and Orphan Island as well as many picture books including the Charlie and Mouse books (with Emily Hughes), Endlessly Ever After (with Dan Santat), Bruce Springsteen: A Little Golden Biography (with Jeffrey Ebbeler) and Swan, the Life and Dance of Anna Pavlova (with Julie Morstad).Laurel has written two collections of poems, Daphne & Jim: a choose-your-own-adventure biography in verse and The Myth of the Simple Machines. She also edited an anthology of nonfiction, Half/Life: Jew-ish tales from Interfaith Homes. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a former Michener-Engle Fellow, Laurel has published work in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, the Utne Reader, the Chicago Sun-Times, and elsewhere. She teaches in the MFAC program at Hamline University. A Baltimore native, Laurel lives in Atlanta with her family.Please support Commonplace by becoming a patron here!

Episode 118: Laurel Snyder

Extra ResourcesBooks and Selected Other Work by Charif ShanahanPOETRYTrace Evidence (Tin House, 2023)Into Each Room We Enter Without Knowing (SIU Press, 2017)Books and Selected Other Work by Safia ElhilloPOETRYGirls That Never Die (One World/Random House, 2022)The January Children (University of Nebraska Press, 2017)“Indeterminacy” (Poets.org, 2023)FICTIONHome Is Not a Country (Make Me A World/Random House, 2021)EDITORIAL PROJECTSed. with Fatimah Asghar, The BreakBeat Poets, Vol. 3: Halal If You Hear Me (Haymarket Books, 2019)Also ReferencedCave CanemMiznaThe Ineffable Residence: Safia Elhillo Interviews Charif ShanahanMoore Lecture Series at Northwestern UniversityAbdel Halim HafezSudan Cipher Orpheus & EuridiceTercetGhazalSonnet“Indeterminacy” by Charif Shanahan (chosen by Patricia Smith)Wallace Stegner FellowshipFulbright FellowshipEavan BolandMichele Elam, The Souls of Mixed Folk: Race, Politics, and Aesthetics in the New Millennium (Stanford University Press, 2011)Omar ibn SaidBios:Charif Shanahan is the author of Trace Evidence: poems, which was Longlisted for the National Book Award for Poetry, and Into Each Room We Enter without Knowing, which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry and the Publishing Triangle's Thom Gunn Award. He is an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Northwestern University.Safia Elhillo is Sudanese by way of Washington, DC. She is the author of The January Children, Girls That Never Die, and the novel in verse Home Is Not a Country. With Fatimah Asghar, she is co-editor of the anthology Halal If You Hear Me.Isaac Ginsberg Miller is a PhD candidate in Black Studies at Northwestern University, where he is also a member of the Poetry and Poetics Graduate Cluster. His chapbook Stopgap, won The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review Chapbook Contest and was published in 2019.Please support Commonplace by becoming a patron here!Sign up for “Reading with Rachel,” the newest course in The Commonplace School for Embodied Poetics.

Episode 117: Charif Shanahan & Safia Elhillo with Isaac Ginsberg Miller

Links, Bios, & Support InfoBryant Park Reading SeriesUniversity of MarylandLibrary of CongressWilliam MeredithKim NovakBMCCKGB reading seriesDavid LehmanStar BlackPaul RomeroSonia SanchezAllen Ginsberg’s “Sunflower Sutra”Phllyis Levin Matt YeagerDavid LehmanWill Harris’s Brother PoemJosé Oliverez’s Promises of GoldMartha Graham CrackerJustin Vivian BondPatty LuPoneBridget EverettKGB Bar ReadingRichard McCann Kinokuniya BookstoreWillam Blake’s “Ah! Sun-flower” June Jordan’s “Sunflower Sonnet Number 1"June Jordan’s “Sunflower Sonnet Number 2"Bios, in order of appearance:Jason Schneiderman is the author of four poetry collections, most recently Hold Me Tight (Red Hen, 2020). He is Professor of English at CUNY’s BMCC and teaches in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. His next collection, Self Portrait of Icarus as a Country on Fire, will be published by Red Hen Press in 2024. Cate Marvin's latest book of poems is Event Horizon (Copper Canyon Press, 2022). She teaches at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York and resides in Southern Maine. Her poems have recently appeared in The Kenyon Review.R. A. Villanueva is the author of Reliquaria, winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize. New work has been featured by the Academy of American Poets, Ploughshares, Poetry, and National Public Radio—and his writing appears widely in international publications such as Poetry London and The Poetry Review. His honors include commendations from the Forward Prizes and fellowships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, and Kundiman. Born in New Jersey, he lives in Brooklyn.Born in Shanghai, Lynn Xu is the author of And Those Ashen Heaps That Cantilevered Vase of Moonlight (Wave, 2022) and Debts & Lessons (Omnidawn, 2013) and the chapbooks: June (Corollary Press, 2006) and Tournesol (Compline, 2021). She has performed cross-disciplinary works at the MOCA Tucson, Guggenheim Museum, The Renaissance Society, Rising Tide Projects, and 300 S. Kelly Street. She teaches at Columbia University, coedits Canarium Books, and lives with her family in New York City and West Texas. Rachel Zucker is the author of a bunch of books, including, most recently, The Poetics of Wrongness. She is the founder and host of Commonplace and directrix of the Commonplace School of Embodied Poetics. She lives in Washington Heights, NY and Scarborough, ME and is mother to three sons.Please support Commonplace by becoming a patron here!Sign up for “Reading with Rachel,” the newest course in The Commonplace School for Embodied Poetics.

Episode 116: The Gathered Congregation

Links, Bios & Support InfoBooks & Selected Projects by Moheb SolimanHOMES (Coffee House Press, 2021)We’re Back! Also ReferencedLorine NiedeckerGabrielle Octavia RuckerCecily Nicholson, Wayside SangDavid ByrneWalt WhitmanEtheridge KnightMoheb Soliman is an interdisciplinary poet from Egypt and the Midwest who's presented work at literary, art, and public spaces in the US, Canada, and abroad with support from the Joyce Foundation, Banff Centre, Minnesota State Arts Board, and diverse other institutions. He has degrees from The New School for Social Research and University of Toronto and lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he was Program Director for the Arab American lit and film organization Mizna before receiving a multi-year Tulsa Artist Fellowship and this year a Milkweed Editions fellowship. His debut poetry collection HOMES (Coffee House Press, 2021), explores nature, modernity, identity, belonging, and sublimity through the site of the Great Lakes bioregion / borderland. Moheb has been a finalist for the Minnesota Book Awards, Heartland Booksellers Award, and others, and was showcased in Ecotone's annual indie press shortlist and the Poets & Writers annual 10 debut poets feature. See more of his work at www.mohebsoliman.info.In honor of this episode, Commonplace’s partner org will donate $250 to the Alliance for the Great Lakes, chosen by Moheb Soliman. The Alliance for the Great lakes is a nonpartisan nonprofit working across the region to protect our most precious resource: the fresh, clean, and natural waters of the Great Lakes.Please support Commonplace by becoming a patron here!Sign up for “Reading with Rachel” the newest course in The Commonplace School for Embodied Poetics.

Episode 115: Moheb Soliman

Links, Bios & Support InfoHope MohrHope Mohr’s Horizon StanzasAlyssa HaradComing to My Senses: A Story of Perfume, Pleasure, and an Unlikely Bridge by Alyssa HaradThe Descent of Alette by Alice NotleyInanna Queen of Heaven and Earth by Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Noah KramerMOTHERs by Rachel ZuckerAlice Notley reading books 1 and 2 of Descent of AletteAlice Notley reads books 3 and 4 of Descent of AletteSharon Bridgforth Omi Osun Joni L. Jones Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben LernerBridge Live ArtsCherie HillKarla QuinteroShifting Cultural Power by Hope MohrNew Commonplace School Course: “Reading with Rachel”Support Commonplace!Transcript (to come)

Episode 114: Live & Embodied

Links and resourcesEpisode 143 of Keep the Channel Open: Nana Kwame Adjei-BrenyahNana Kwame Adjei-BrenyahChain Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-BrenyahFriday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-BrenyahMike SakasegawaLikeWise FictionKeep the Channel Open on TwitterKeep the Channel Open on Insta Keep the Channel Open on YouTubeInformation and sign up for new class “Reading with Rachel”

Episode 113: Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Intimate 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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