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Category: Interviews
Tim Z Hernandez is an American writer, poet, and performer. His first poetry collection Skin Tax (2004) received the 2006 American Book Award and his debut novel Breathing in Dust (2010) was awarded the 2010 Premio Aztlán Literary Prize and was a finalist for the California Book Award. In 2014, he received the Colorado Book Award for his poetry collection Natural Takeover of Small Things (2013) and the International Latino Book Award for his historical fiction novel, Mañana Means Heaven (2013). Most recently he was recognized for his research on locating the victims of the 1948 plane wreck at Los Gatos Canyon, the incident made famous by Woody Guthrie’s song of the same name, which is chronicled in Hernandez’s documentary novel All They Will Call You (2017). Hernandez is currently an associate professor in the University of Texas at El Paso’s bilingual MFA in creative writing program. Following the publication of his latest collection, Some of the Light: New and Selected Poems (2023), he spoke to our Reviews Editor, Isabelle Baafi, about the role of witness and mindfulness in his work.
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‘i will be survived by myself / and the many times that i still have to die’
Editorial by André Naffis-Sahely
André Naffis-Sahely
I first met Gboyega Odubanjo on 29 January 2019 in the Terrace Bar of the Tate Modern. I had just published his poem ‘Confessions in 3/4 Timing’ in the pages of Ambit’s Winter 2018 issue, having been hired by the [...] -
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Category: Interviews
Meena Kandasamy is a poet, novelist, activist, and translator from Chennai, India. Her writing aims to deconstruct trauma and violence, while spotlighting the militant resistance against caste, gender, and ethnic oppressions. She is the author of the poetry collections Touch (2006) and Ms. Militancy (2010), as well as three novels, The Gypsy Goddess (2014), When I Hit You (2017), and Exquisite Cadavers (2019), which have been shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the International Dylan Thomas Prize, the Jhalak Prize, and the Hindu Lit Prize. Following the release of Kandasamy’s latest book of translation, The Book of Desire (Galley Beggar, 2023), and in the lead-up to her third poetry collection, Tomorrow Someone Will Arrest You (forthcoming with Atlantic Books), poet and editor Sohini Basak met with Kandasamy to discuss the politics of translation and the lexicality of love.
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The Body in Bold
Aliyah Begum on three visceral books that consider the body within the context of illness, identity, and desire
Aliyah Begum
The body is a tender space, a negotiation between the soft and the sore. William Gee’s pamphlet Trust Fall navigates this experience of the body through the perspective of chronic illness, and there is an aching sense of guilt throughout [...] -
Business Support Manager
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The Business Support Manager has overall responsibility for the effective and efficient running of the Poetry London office, based at Goldsmiths, University of London, and the operational delivery of the Charity’s objectives, working closely with and supporting the PL Editors. [...] -
Online Exclusive
Averse Miscellany: Palgrave’s Golden Treasury
Camille Ralphs
In her sixth instalment of her exclusive column for Poetry London, Camille Ralphs revisits one of the most influential English-language anthologies ever published, namely Palgrave’s Golden Treasury, and considers the rise and fall in the fortunes of various poets included in its pages, ranging from William Drummond of Hawthornden (1585–1649) to Roy Campbell (1901–1957).
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Online ExclusiveCategory: Interviews
Victoria Chang is the author of The Trees Witness Everything (Copper Canyon Press, 2022), Dear Memory (Milkweed, 2021), and OBIT (Copper Canyon Press, 2020), which was named a New York Times Notable Book, a Time Must-Read Book, and received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Poetry, and the PEN/Voelcker Award. Her forthcoming book of poems, With My Back to the World, will be published in 2024 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. In the lead-up to her new collection, Jennifer Wong sat down with her to discuss how innovations of form and lyricism can bridge the layers of identity and grief.
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Category: Interviews
Don Paterson was born in Dundee in 1963. His poetry has won many awards, including the Whitbread Poetry Prize, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Costa Poetry Award, all three Forward Prizes and, on two occasions, the T S Eliot Prize. He was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2009. Until recently he was Professor of Poetry at the University of St Andrews (he is now Professor Emeritus), and was Poetry Editor at Picador Macmillan for twenty-five years. He also works as a jazz musician. Shortly after the launch of his memoir, Toy Fights: A Boyhood (Faber, 2023), he sat down with our Reviews Editor Isabelle Baafi to talk about the influence of music and play on his childhood and poetry.
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Resurrection Dance
Dzifa Benson on two debut collections that reanimate the long-forgotten past
Dzifa Benson
Given that dance expression is so integral to Cane, Corn & Gully – Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa’s hallucinatory debut collection – it’s curious to see that in the short essay-poem ‘Preface’, which itself unconventionally occurs on page 19 of the book, [...]