THE POETRY QUESTION: TPQ20

Join Chris in conversation with Natalie Eilbert, author of Overland (Copper Canyon Press), about passions, process, pitfalls, and Poetry! Natalie Eilbert is the author of Indictus, winner of Noemi Press's 2016 Poetry Prize, as well as the poetry collection, Swan Feast (Bloof Books, 2015). Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from POETRY, Granta, The Jewish Current, The New Yorker, Tin House, The Kenyon Review, The Brooklyn Rail, and elsewhere. She was the recipient of the 2016 Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellowship at University of Wisconsin–Madison and is the founding editor of The Atlas Review. She lives and teaches in Madison, Wisconsin.

Join Chris in conversation with author of Stereo(types), Jonah Mixon-Webster, about passions, process, pitfalls, and Poetry!

Join Chris in conversation with author of Refuse to Disappear (Word Works Books), Dr. Tara Betts, about passions, process. pitfalls, and Poetry! Tara Betts is the author of two full-length poetry collections: Break the Habit, which was published in October 2016 with Trio House Press, and her debut collection Arc & Hue on the Willow Books imprint of Aquarius Press. In 2010, Essence Magazine named her as one of their "40 Favorite Poets.”

Join Chris in conversation with Nat Raum, Editor of Fifth Wheel Press, about passions, process, pitfalls, and Poetry! Nat Raum is a Queer "artist" and "writer" based in Baltimore. Fan of ambient music, open-world RPGs, noise-cancelling headphones, reality tv, and bisexual lighting (preferably all at once).

Join Chris in conversation with Diamond Forde, author of Mother Body (Saturnalia Books), about passions, process, pitfalls, and Poetry! Diamond Forde's debut collection, Mother Body, is the winner of the 2019 Saturnalia Poetry Prize. She has received numerous awards and prizes, including the Pink Poetry Prize, the Furious Flower Poetry Prize, and CLA's Margaret Walker Memorial Prize, and placed in the Frontier Poetry's New Poets Award.

She is a Callaloo and Tin House fellow, whose work has appeared in Massachusetts Review, Ninth Letter, NELLE, Tupelo Quarterly and more. Diamond serves as the assistant editor of Southeast Review, and the fiction editor for Nat. Brut.

Join Chris in conversation with author and educator, Dorothea Lasky, about passions, process, pitfalls, and Poetry! DOROTHEA LASKY: I am the author of five full-length collections of poetry and one book of prose. My newest book is Animal (Wave Books). I am also the author of ROME (Liveright/W.W. Norton) and Milk, Thunderbird, Black Life, and AWE, all out from Wave Books. I co-wrote Astro Poets: Your Guides to the Zodiac (Flatiron Books, 2019) with the poet, Alex Dimitrov. I have also written several chapbooks, including Snakes (Tungsten Press, 2017) and Poetry is Not a Project (Ugly Ducking Presse, 2010). My writing has appeared in POETRY, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Atlantic, and Boston Review, among other places. I am a co-editor of Open the Door: How to Excite Young People About Poetry (McSweeney’s, 2013) and the editor of the forthcoming Essays (Essay Press, 2021).

Join Chris in conversation with Shelley Wong, author of As She Appears (YesYesBooks), about passions, process, pitfalls, and Poetry! 

Shelley Wong is the author of As She Appears (YesYes Books, May 2022), winner of the Pamet River Prize and longlisted for the 2022 National Book Award. She is an affiliate artist at Headlands Center for the Arts and lives in San Francisco. Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Best American Poetry, Kenyon Review, New England Review, and The New Republic.

Join Chris in conversation with hip hop legend, Sage Francis, about passions, process… well, really about life and music! Sage Francis is widely considered one of our generation’s greatest lyricists. His career derives mainly from gifted wordplay which creates vivid narratives to instigate as well as inspire, but since it often derives from an accumulation of public disdain and personal turmoil, it’s more about storming the castle than about watching the throne.

Dubbed as the “forefather of indie-hop,” Francis originally earned acclaim in the early 2000’s by winning the most highly coveted titles of the emcee battle circuit. With little to no funding, Francis sustained himself by selling his innovative “Sick of” mixtapes, all made by hand on the floor of his Providence, RI apartment. These were essentially bootleg compilations full of select recordings from his 12” vinyl singles, demo sessions, live performances and radio freestyles. The popularity of these tapes birthed Strange Famous Records (SFR); a meager, one-man operation in 1999.

Despite having no official distribution, Francis’ unique brand of music spread like wildfire via the advent of file sharing networks. This resulted in him attaining a massive cult-like following around the world, creating a demand for his albums and live performances at which point the bigger labels took notice. With his first studio album, Personal Journals (2002,) Francis daringly set aside the more boastful side of rap by catering to his poetic leanings and scathing socio-political commentary.

In 2005 Sage Francis was the first hip-hop artist signed to Epitaph Records and soon became one of the highest selling independent artists of his genre. Rather than abandon his day-to-day grind at SFR, he channeled all of his newfound resources into it, allowing the label to expand in staff as well as roster. Having fulfilled his contract obligations with Epitaph Records, Sage Francis has returned to releasing music independently as he gears up to defeat the odds. Once again.

“COPPER GONE”, Francis’ 6th studio album, dropped on June 3rd, 2014 via Strange Famous Records. This indie release managed to break Billboard’s Top 200 as well as iTunes top 5 for hip-hop in both the US and in the UK. In 2016 Sage Francis was granted an honorary patronage by the prestigious Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland for his contributions to literature. Francis continues to tour internationally and is developing a new group project with B. Dolan called EPIC BEARD MEN, slated for a 2018 release.

Join Chris in conversation with Kemi Alabi, author of Against Heaven (Graywolf Press), about passions, process, pitfalls, and Poetry! Kemi Alabi is the author of Against Heaven (Graywolf Press, 2022), selected by Claudia Rankine as winner of the 2021 Academy of American Poets First Book Award. Their poems and essays appear in the Atlantic, Poetry, the Nation, Boston Review, the BreakBeat Poets Vol. 2, Best New Poets 2019, and elsewhere. Selected by Chen Chen as winner of the 2020 Beacon Street Poetry Prize, Kemi has received Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and Brittle Paper Award nominations along with fellowships from MacDowell, Civitella Ranieri, Tin House and Pink Door.

Kemi believes in the world-shifting power of words and the radical imaginations of Black queer and trans people. As cultural strategy director of Forward Together, they built political power with cultural workers of color through programs like Echoing Ida, a home for Black women and nonbinary writers, and annual art campaigns like Trans Day of Resilience. The Echoing Ida Collection, coedited with Cynthia R. Greenlee and Janna Zinzi, is available now from Feminist Press.

Born in Wisconsin on a Sunday in July, Kemi now lives in Chicago, IL.

Join Chris in conversation with former United States Poet Laureate and author of Musical Tables (Random House), Billy Collins, about passions, process, pitfalls, and Poetry! Billy Collins is the author of twelve collections of poetry including Whale Day, The Rain in Portugal, Aimless Love, Horoscopes for the Dead, Ballistics, The Trouble with Poetry, Nine Horses, Sailing Alone Around the Room, Questions About Angels, The Art of Drowning, and Picnic, Lightning. He is also the editor of Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry, 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day, and Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems About Birds. A former Distinguished Professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York, Collins served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003 and as New York State Poet from 2004 to 2006. In 2016 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in Florida with his wife Suzannah.