In this conversation Rachel welcomes poet, interdisciplinary artist, professor, and Bagley Wright Lecturer Douglas Kearney to Commonplace. They discuss their experiences writing and performing lectures for the Bagley Wright Lecture Series, which supports contemporary poets. Kearney and Zucker speak about ideas of influences on poetry and poetics, Kearney's recent ADHD diagnosis, scales for writers, the failures of metaphor, insight porn, epiphanies, performance, and how the idea of an authentic self is rooted in white supremacy.

This episode also includes excerpts from the following lectures: “Red Read / Read Red: Putting Violence Down in Poetry,” performed live with musician Val Jeanty at the Ace Hotel Brooklyn, hosted by Bomb Magazine; “#WerewolfGoals,” performed via Zoom and hosted by Washington University in St. Louis; and “I Killed, I Died: Banter, Self-Destruction, and the Poetry Reading,” performed via Zoom and hosted by Cave Canem.