Many thanks to Emily Bonner and the editors of Barely South Review for taking the time to talk with me about music, regionalism, and persona poetry. You can find our conversation here and two new astronomy poems here.
We also talked a little about Portishead, so here’s “The Rip”:
A couple of weeks ago, I had the great pleasure of reading in the Fort Gondo Poetry Series founded and curated by Jessica Baran and Jennifer Kronovet. The series is housed in the Fort Gondo Compound for the Arts in St. Louis and is a really lovely space for poems. The next installment of the series is March 23 featuring Mary Jo Bang and Mark Bibbins.
These photos are courtesy of Jessica.
Many thanks to Jorge Antonio Vallejos for reviewing Mixology as part of his Black Coffee Poet project. You can find his review here and the accompanying interview here.
Originally, I wanted to use my friend Kevin Neireiter image as the cover. I think the book would have read differently with an eight-armed DJ on the front. Please click on the image to see it in all its full-sized glory.
Don Peteroy at The Cincinnati Review asked if I would trade poems for a new album by Public Enemy from the Fear of a Black Planet era. Which, of course, I would while stepping with the S1Ws. You can read our dialogue here.
In honor of this imaginary P.E. album, here’s one of my all-time favorite cuts, “Don’t Believe the Hype”:
My friend and poet extraordinaire, Gabrielle Calvocoressi, tagged me in the Pen American Center’s Poetry Relay. You can find the audio and text of five poems from the Jack Johnson project here.
I found this image and some others of Jack Johnson here. The source images are much higher quality than this.
Shout out to Allison Hedge Coke and the editors of Platte Valley Review for running some of the poems from my new project. You can find the poems here.
“In Walked Bud” was inspired by the Thelonious Monk song of the same name from his live album, Misterioso:
Many thanks to Illinois Poet Laureate Kevin Stein for including my work on the Poet Laureate website. You can find text and audio of poems from The Big Smoke here.
My friend and cultural scholar, Howard Ramsby, just posted a series of links to some of the Jack Johnson poems on SIUE’s Black Studies Blog. Thanks for your continued support, Howard!
Here’s part of the reading I gave at O, Miami’s Anthology of Rap Celebration. Shouts out to Kool Moe Dee, Monie Love, Adrian Castro, and Adam Bradley. It was humbling experience sharing a stage with such incredible artists.
Many thanks to the editors of The American Poetry Review for publishing two of the poems from the Jack Johnson project in the July/August issue of the journal. They’ve posted “Fidelity,” one of the poems in Etta Duryea’s voice, online as well. You can read it here.
Jack Johnson & Etta Duryea
While I was crafting the poems in Etta’s voice, I listened to Arcade Fire’s Funeral . Something about the album made sense in the context of her dialogue. This song was on repeat when I was working on “Fidelity”:
