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11 Posts

Authors / Poetry & Migration

On Yalie Saweda Kamara’s Besaydoo: a monument to multiplicity (and home)

Briana Gwin — 03/11/2024

As an Afro-Latina American citizen, I tend to seek stories that center voices, cultures, experiences, and lifeways historically peripheralized by the Western literary canon. But for all the breadth that I encounter still with every new BIPOC-authored book I read, I am routinely enchanted by a sense of what remains familiar. What lands have you been denied, what spaces have you been neglected in—and rejected from—and from what sunless places were you forced to grow? I ponder these questions as I read, acutely aware of the ways longing for BIPOC authors so often manifests on the page as a reaching…

Authors / Interviews / Watch & Listen / Roundup / Poetry & Migration

Listen Here: National Poetry Month Special (Part Two)

Bailey Hutchinson — 04/02/2021

Hello again, friends! It’s time for round two of our National Poetry Month feature (check out part one here).

For our second installment, I touched base with a few well-loved poets whose books are entering the world again as paberbacks. I’m thrilled that Grady Chambers, John James, and Ada Limón shared their thoughts (and voices) with us to discuss the process of putting together a poetry collection, as well as the power of poetry-out-loud. Listen to audio of them reading from their collections below!

Note: for best listening experience, please use Google Chrome.

Audio file

“A Story About the Moon” from North

Authors / Interviews / Watch & Listen / Roundup / Poetry & Migration

Listen Here: National Poetry Month Special (Part One)

Bailey Hutchinson — 04/02/2021

Hello, friends! Welcome to a very special edition of 5 Reasons to Teach This Book. This month, we’re taking a break from our standard five-question, solo-author interview format; instead, we’re taking a stroll with a few different poets through new books and returning favorites in Milkweed’s 2021 poetry lineup. And oh, hey, look at that—it’s National Poetry Month! Why not celebrate by listening to each of these striking poets read from their collections?

We’re starting off this two-part feature with Wayne Miller, Kathryn Smith, and Robert VanderMolen, each of whom have new books out now (or soon!) with Milkweed. Each collection has…

Authors / Poetry & Migration

5 Reasons to Teach This Book: Dēmos

Samantha Tijquanna (Tijqua) Daiker — 01/29/2021

Welcome, friends, to the latest installment of 5 Reasons to Teach This Book! In this interview series, we examine what we can learn from Milkweed’s titles by discussing our books with educators, authors, and booksellers. This month, we’re delighted to feature an incandescent conversation between Benjamín Naka-Hasebe Kingsley and Milkweed Fellow Tijqua Daiker. Read on to learn more about Kingsley’s upcoming poetry collection, Dēmos: An American Multitude, out in March!

Tijqua Daiker: I’m endlessly intrigued by the poems in this collection that appear in the form of Punnett squares. It speaks to the science of identity, which has…

Authors / Poetry & Migration

5 Reasons to Teach This Book: The Century

Bailey Hutchinson — 10/08/2020

Welcome, friends, to the latest installment of 5 Reasons to Teach This Book! In this interview series, we examine what we can learn from Milkweed’s titles by discussing our books with educators, authors, and booksellers. This month, we’re featuring Éireann Lorsung’s recently-released collection, The Century.

These poems navigate cross-continental histories as best they can with the flawed vehicle we have collectively inherited: language. “I need a language more open / than the language of forms, more / spacious than the language poetry / can be,” Lorsung writes, cueing readers to this book’s mission: not to solve the dilemma of situating…

Authors / Interviews / Watch & Listen / Poetry & Migration

Deep Cuts: Voice in a Time of Distance

Bailey Hutchinson — 04/09/2020

Hello, friends, and welcome to another edition of Deep Cuts. In this series, we’ll be diving in with some of our authors and discussing the behind-the-scenes work that goes into the composition and production of their books. Oh, and real quick: this is Bailey Hutchinson, and I’m honored to be taking up the curatorial mantle for Julian Randall, the inaugural Milkweed Fellow, who created this series.

Friends, I’m feeling strange, and that’s in no small part because I’ve been alone in my apartment for over three weeks. It’s likely many of you find yourselves in a similar situation: self-isolation, while…

Authors / Interviews / Poetry & Migration

Deep Cuts—Rick Barot's The Galleons

Julian Randall — 10/25/2019

Happy October Milkweed fans and friends! I’d like to introduce the second blog series that I will be curating this year, which we are calling Deep Cuts! In this series I have the privilege of diving in with the author of a compelling Milkweed title and discussing the behind-the-scenes work that goes into the composition and production of their book.

This month, I interviewed the inimitable Rick Barot around his collection of poems The Galleons, forthcoming February 2020. At once intimate and historical, The Galleons articulates both loss and life with always impeccable precision. I’ve been a tremendous…

Poetry & Migration

Poetry & Migration #4: Ana Božičević

Ana Božičević — 03/29/2017

As part of “Because We Come From Everything: Poetry & Migration,” the first formalized programming of the Poetry Coalition, Milkweed Editions, Coffee House Press, Graywolf Press, and Birds, LLC have partnered to curate a selection of poems on the theme of migration. Installment #4: Ana Božičevic’s “Migration,” from Joy of Missing Out.

Poetry & Migration

Poetry & Migration #3: Chris Santiago

Chris Santiago — 03/23/2017

As part of “Because We Come From Everything: Poetry & Migration,” the first formalized programming of the Poetry Coalition, Milkweed Editions, Coffee House Press, Graywolf Press, and Birds, LLC have partnered to curate a selection of poems on the theme of migration. Installment #3: Chris Santiago’s “Tula,” from Tula.

Poetry & Migration

Poetry & Migration #2: Mai Der Vang

Mai Der Vang — 03/16/2017

As part of “Because We Come From Everything: Poetry & Migration,” the first formalized programming of the Poetry Coalition, Milkweed Editions, Coffee House Press, Graywolf Press, and Birds, LLC have partnered to curate a selection of poems on the theme of migration. Installment #2: Mai Der Vang’s “Transmigration,” from Afterland.