Commonplace Podcast

Raised in Brooklyn, NY, Sabrina Orah Mark earned a BA from Barnard College, Columbia University. She also earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and a PhD in English from the University of Georgia. She is the author of the poetry collectionsTsim Tsum,and The Babies. Her collection of stories,Wild Milk,won the Georgia Author of the Year Award for Short Story and was a finalist for the Townsend Prize for Fiction.

Mark’s accomplishments include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Sustainable Arts Foundation Award, a fellowship from the Fine Arts Work Center, and a Creative Capital Award. In addition to teaching private workshops she currently teaches nonfiction, fiction, and poetry for the Bennington Writing Seminars. She lives in Athens, Georgia, with her husband, Reginald McKnight, and their two sons.

Books by Sabrina Orah Mark:

Happily (Random House, 2023)

Wild Milk (Dorothy, 2018)

The Babies (Saturnalia, 2004)

Tsim Tsum (Saturnalia, 2009)

Also Mentioned:

Episode 33: Sabrina Orah Mark 

Nadja Speigleman

Bruno Schultz’s fairytale murals

“Borges and I” by Jorges Louis Borges

Grimm’s fairytales

Lidia Yuknavitch

Bella Baxter

The Golden Key

Angela Carter

“The Aleph” by Jorge Luis Borges

Reading with Rachel (2024-2025 cycle)

The New York-based photographer Lois Conner has been traveling the world with a 7x17” banquet camera for nearly half a century. Through the elongated format of her work she has explored the landscape and the temper of our times; her art is both contemporary and, due to her vision, ‘a long view’ that captures the eternal in the moment, timeless. Conner’s work is that of the artist-artisan: every aspect of her art involves the hand made combined with demanding techniques of platinum printing. In recent years she has employed digital technologies to expand the format of her work, embracing landscapes from the natural to the man-made. Her annual trips to China since 1984 have allowed her to follow the transformation of the People’s Republic and to share her unique understanding of the country’s changing urban and rural mien, as well as the vistas that inspired the country’s unique culture.

Conner has been based in New York City since 1971, where she worked for the United Nations until 1984. During that time she was awarded a Bachelor in Fine Arts (photography) from the Pratt Institute and a Master’s degree from Yale University. Conner has also taught photography at many places, including over a decade as professor of photography at Yale University.

For a list of Lois Conner’s publications and exhibitions please visit her website. 

Eugenia Leigh is a Korean American poet and the author of Bianca (Four Way Books, 2023) and Blood, Sparrows and Sparrows (Four Way Books, 2014). Her poems and essays have appeared in numerous publications including TIME, The Nation, Poetry, Ploughshares,Waxwing, and the Best of the Net anthology. Eugenia serves as a Poetry Editor at The Adroit Journal and as Valentines Editor at Honey Literary.

Books by Eugenia Leigh:

Bianca (Four Way Books, 2023)

Blood, Sparrows and Sparrows (Four Way Books 2014)

Also Mentioned:

Hey It’s Me podcast (with Mike Sakasagawa and Rachel Zucker)

Eugenia Leigh’s on the Zuihitsu

Black Lives Matter

Alan Shapiro

Hybrida by Tina Chang

The Undertaker’s Daughter by Toi Derricotte  

The Zuihitsu Form

Franny Choi 

Confessional Poetry 

Bri Gonzalez

Jessica Nirvana Ram

Odes to Lithium by Shira Erlichman

Lorca’s Duende 

2024 AWP Panel on Mental Illness: Danez Smith, Leila Chatti, Stevie Edwards, Marlin M. Jenkins 

John Murillo’s “Upon Reading That Eric Dolphy Transcribed Even the Calls of Certain Species of Birds,”

Carrie Fountain’s “The Jungle”

Rachel Zucker’s SoundMachine

Keith S Wilson

Vanessa Angélica Villarreal

Eduardo Corral’s Slow Lightning

Mai Der Vang & her book, Yellow Rain

Visual Poem by Keith S. Wilson

Time Travel by James Gleick

Carlo Rovelli’s The Order of Time

Brian Greene

Hafizah Geter’s The Black Period

Nicole Sealey’s The Ferguson Report

Donate to Brooklyn Poets

Mike Sakasegawa is a writer, photographer, book artist, and the host of the arts and literature podcast Keep the Channel Open, and the short fiction podcast LikeWise Fiction.

His writing has appeared in Last Exit, Catapult, PetaPixel, and Don’t Take Pictures Magazine.

His photographs have been featured on Lenscratch, A Photo Editor, and SD Voyager, and included in several group exhibitions. Originally from California’s Central Coast, he now lives in San Diego with his family.

Rachel Zucker is the author of The Poetics of Wrongness, SoundMachine, The Pedestrians, MOTHERs, Museum of Accidents, The Bad Wife Handbook, The Last Clear Narrative, Eating in the Underworld, and with Arielle Greenberg, Home/Birth: A Poemic, Starting Today: 100 Poems for Obama’s First 100 Days and Women Poets on Mentorship.

She is mother to three sons, founder and host of the Commonplace podcast, directrix of The Commonplace School for Embodied Poetics, and teaches poetry at NYU and other places.

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.

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.

Books by Rachel Zucker

The 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 Greenberg

Home/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 Referenced

Robert Hass

Alice Notley

Bernadette Mayer

Toi Derricotte

Alicia Ostriker

Arielle Greenberg

Marina Abramović

Jorie Graham

Ina May Gaskin

Brenda Hillman

Adrienne Rich

Dorothea Lange

Robert Frank

Sally Mann

Frank O’Hara

Allen Ginsberg

James Schuyler

Tillie Olsen

Many 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

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 Geter

The Black Period (PRH, 2022)

Un-American (Wesleyan University Press, 2020)

Also Referenced:

Gabrielle Civil

Judy Grahn and Pat Parker

Parul Sehgal

Diving into the Wreck writing workshop with Sarah Dohrmann

The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams

Marcelo Hernandez Castillo’s Children of the Land

Meander Spiral Explode by Jane Alison

Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

Sharon Olds

Ed Roberson

Jamia Wilson

Camille Rankine

JSTOR

War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges

War Time: An Idea, Its History, Its Consequences by Mary L. Dudziak

Hafizah Geter on Jean Valentine

Uzo Uweala

Toni Morrison

Voice Dream app

Don’t Let Me Be Lonely by Claudia Rankine 

Tyrone Geter

Charles W. White

Jackson Pollock

Wild by Cheryl Strayed

Wave: A Memoir by Sonali Deraniyagala

The Case Against the Trauma Plot - New Yorker Article by Parul Sehgal

Dick Wolf

Grub Street Center for Creative Writing

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 Ruefle

The 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 Episode

Also Referenced

3 Days of Poetry hosted by Wave Books

Reading with Rachel 

The Will-O’-the-Wisps Are in Town by Hans Christian Andersen

Diane 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 Grahame

Mary Ruefle on Jordan Kisner‘s Thresholds (podcast)

My Dinner with Andre (movie)

MASS MOCA ‘s Tree Logic

James Turrell

The Art of Cruelty by Maggie Nelson

Being with Dying by Joan Halifax

Biosphere 2

Spiral Jetty

Andy Goldsworthy

Ikkuyu

Hans Christian Andersen

Gutenberg Bible

The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library 

Kobayashi Issa 

The Essential Haiku by Robert Hass