Waves Breaking

Finally, after a long break, Waves Breaking returns with this interview with Kamden Ishmael Hilliard. Kam generously shares their time with me to discuss their debut book of poems, MissSettl, out last year with Nightboat Books. We go in deep to discuss their thoughts around the sentence, modes of speech, writing poems within this current era of late-stage capitalism, and teaching students.

Kamden Ishmael Hilliard was born in La Jolla, CA; their fam settled on O'ahu, Hawai'i. Kamden holds a BA in American Studies from the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa and an MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Kamden, a nonbinary Black settler who goes by Kam, works on issues of surveillance, race, queerness, contemporary art and American politics. They're thankful for support from The National YoungArts Foundation, The Davidson Institute, Sarah Lawrence College, and The UCROSS Foundation. Kam’s writing appears in West Branch, The Black Warrior Review, Tagvverk, Denver Quarterly, The Columbia Review, and other publications.   Formerly, they served as an AmeriCorps VISTA, held Maytag, Teaching-Writing, and Pfluflaught Fellowships at the University of Iowa, and were the 2020-2022 Anisfield-Wolf Fellow in Publishing and Writing at the Cleveland State University Poetry Center, a reader at Flypaper Lit, and a board member at VIDA: Women In Literary Arts. Kamden's website

Kamden's Instagram

Go buy MissSettl!

Mentioned in the interview:

• Joyelle McSweeney

• Jayson P. Smith

• “Poem About My Rights” by June Jordan

• bell hooks

• Hoodie Allen (I’m sorry lol)

• Skee-Lo

• Punahou School Hawaii

• Iowa Writers Workshop and the Cold War

• James Baldwin

• Nene (bird)

  • The nene population is on the rebound from its endangered status

• Beloved by Toni Morrison

  • Huge plug for everyone to listen to the audiobook version of Beloved read by Toni Morrison herself. Find it on Libby!

• Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson

• Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (film)

  • My poem with Judge Doom in it is “After Saturn Ate His Own Kid” at the bottom of this page.

• West Side Story (film)

• Goodbye, Vitamin by Rachel Khong

Kam’s Anti-recommendations:

• Apocalypse Now (film)

• The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

• The Sandman (TV series)

This show's Editor and Social Media Manager is Mitchel Davidovitz. 

The Sound of Waves Breaking is a clip of my cousin Ian and me (fake band name: Diminutive Denizens) doing a cover of “Dig My Grave” by They Might Be Giants. It’s on this cover album of Apollo 18 if you want to listen to the whole thing. There are a bunch of other covers you can listen to there for free, including a very dumb skit my friend Greg and I did for one of the “Fingertips.” Greg’s the host of the excellent podcast This Might Be a Podcast which I’ve also guested on many times. Check it out!

Photo of Yanyi, taken by him

In this episode I spoke with Yanyi about his new book, Dream of the Divided Field, and his newsletter, The Reading.

Yanyi is the author of Dream of the Divided Field (One World Random House, 1 March 2022) and The Year of Blue Water (Yale University Press 2019), winner of the 2018 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize. His work has been featured in or at NPR’s All Things Considered, New York Public Library, Granta, and New England Review, and he is the recipient of fellowships from Asian American Writers’ Workshop and Poets House. He holds an MFA in Poetry from New York University and was most recently poetry editor at Foundry. Currently, he teaches creative writing at large and gives writing advice at The Reading.

Yanyi's website You can purchase Dream of the Divided Field here Yanyi's Twitter Yanyi's Instagram

Various books, movies, podcasts, etc. mentioned in this episode:

• Algorithm crowd sounds

• Surviving R. Kelly docuseries

• Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew

• AI generated imagery

  • @images_ai

  • WOMBO Dream

  • DALL-E

• Virgina Woolf’s audio BBC interview

• When We Were Young Festival and its much parodied poster

• Black Mountain Poets

  • Olson’s "Projective Verse" manifesto, some explicit field talk

• Lydia Davis’s "Hand" story (this is the whole story lol):

  • "Beyond the hand holding this book that I’m reading, I see another hand lying idle and slightly out of focus — my extra hand."

  • (more stories here)

  • "The Cows" chapbook

• Yanyi's newsletter

  • Letter on why he left Substack

• Yanyi at the Poetry Project discussing de las Rivas's "Black Sun" and fascist dogwhistling in contemporary poetry

• Ghost, the platform Yanyi uses to now send his newsletters

• bell hooks’s Teaching to Transgress full PDF

• Tell Them Anything You Want: A Portrait of Maurice Sendak documentary

• Laura Engels Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie series

• FEELING ASIAN podcast episodes:

  • An Evening With Two Asian Therapists (feat. Peter Adams, Ph.D and Melissa Yao, Ph.D)

  • Asian Seeking Asian (therapists)

 

Editor and Social Media Manager: Mitchel Davidovitz

Host and Producer: Avren Keating

Sound of Waves Breaking: Sounds from this video of Merlin, my sweet 5-year-old Frenchie that died of a brain tumor in the time between recording and editing this episode. I love you, little bubs. 

In this interview, I spoke with Sarah Nnenna Loveth Nwafor about their latest publication Already Knew You Were Coming. We discuss Igbo cosmology and time, vengeance poetry, their process in writing this chapbook, and more.

Sarah Nnenna Loveth Nwafor (They/Them) is a queer Igbo-American Poet, Educator, and Facilitator who descends of a powerful ancestry. They believe that storytelling is magick, and they speak to practice traditions of Igbo orature. When they witness, their forebears are pleased. Sarah has been writing for a minute and is learning something new about their voice each year, but one thing they’re proud to share is that they have a chapbook out with Game Over Books! When Sarah's not writing; they’re probably sitting under a tree, reading about Love, dancing with friends or cooking a bomb-ass meal like the true Taurus they are.

Go buy Already Knew You Were Coming

Sarah’s Instagram

Sarah’s website

Books, artists, musicians, etc. mentioned in this episode:

• Mithsuca Berry

• Alexis Pauline Gumbs’s Dub: Finding Ceremony

• Sister Love: The Letters of Audre Lorde and Pat Parker 1974-1989

• I.S. Jones’s Spells of My Name

• Nwaobiala

• Dena Igutsi’s Cut Woman

Editor and Social Media Manager: Mitchel Davidovitz

Host and Producer: Avren Keating

Sound of Waves Breaking: Melody Loop 95 BPM, DaveJf

In this episode, I spoke with Cody-Rose Clevidence about their latest publication, Aux Arc / Trypt Ich, out with Nightboat Books. We dug into language, exploring motif, grief, love—all that good stuff. 

Cody-Rose Clevidence is the author of BEAST FEAST (2014) and Flung/Throne (2018), both from Ahsahta Press, Listen My Friend This is the Dream I Dreamed Last Night from The Song Cave and Aux Arc / Trypt Ich as well as several handsome chapbooks (flowers and cream, NION, garden door press, Auric).  They live in the Arkansas Ozarks with their medium sized but lion-hearted dog, Birdie and an absolute lunatic cat.  

Cody-Rose's Instagram

Buy Aux Arc / Trypt Ich!

Poets, books, etc. mentioned in this episode:

• Cody-Rose Clevidence's BEAST FEAST 
• Turquoise waters of the Ozarks
• "Apophatic" was the word I was trying to remember! I can't read this work because of the paywall, but it seems like it might be useful in exploring Manley Hopkins's contemplations of God. 
• H.D.
• Homer
• Algernon Charles Swinburne
• William Wordsworth
• English literature's Romanticism 
• Gerard Manley Hopkins
• Stephen Taylor's Building Thoreau's Cabin
• Jerome Rothenberg (editor), Technicians of the Sacred 
• Jerome Rothenberg (editor), Shaking the Pumpkin: Traditional Poetry of the Indian North Americas
• Guy Deutscher's The Unfolding of Language
• Guy Deutscher's Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages
• George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's Metaphors We Live By

 

Editor and Social Media Manager: Mitchel Davidovitz

Host and Producer: Avren Keating

Sound of Waves Breaking: "Arkansas" by John Linnell. At last, one half of TMBG makes it onto the pod.

In this episode, I spoke with féi hernandez about Hood Criatura, their poetry collection released in 2020. We also spoke about their incredible skills as an illustrator, and féi recommends some fantastic reads.

féi hernandez (b.1993 Chihuahua, Mexico) is a trans, Inglewood- raised, formerly undocumented immigrant artist, writer, healer. They have been published in POETRY, Pank Magazine, Oxford Review of Books, Frontier Poetry, The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext, amongst others. They are a Define American Fellow for 2021 and are currently the Board President of Gender Justice Los Angeles. féi is the author of the full-length poetry collection Hood Criatura (Sundress Publications 2020) which was on NPR’s Best Books of 2020. féi collects Pokémon plushies.

féi’s website

féi’s instagram

Purchase Hood Criatura

Poets, books, etc. mentioned in this episode:

• Gloomy the Naughty Grizzly, anime series

• Sailor Moon, anime series

• Natalie Diaz’s My Brother Was an Aztec

• Natalie Diaz’s Postcolonial Love Poem

• Ambar Lucid and her song “Story to Tell”

• féi’s illustrations

• Hood Criatura on Goodreads, Barnes and Noble, and Amazon. Go leave a review :)

Editor and Social Media Manager: Mitchel Davidovitz

The Sound of Waves Breaking is “Project - 3_30_21, 6.55 PM.wav” by bradygalp123

In this episode, I spoke with Larkin Christie about their book gather all your supple creatures. 

Larkin Christie is a queer poet living on unceded Pocumtuc land in what is currently known as Western Massachusetts. Their second collection, gather all your supple creatures, is out now. Their creative work draws on experiences as an educator, organizer, and dancer. 

Larkin's website

Larkin's Instagram

Go buy gather all your supple creatures!

 

Quotes, workshop, and media mentioned in this episode:

In Surreal Life, workshop   Honeyfitz, band   From Larkin: "I just did some research and the quote is actually by Shelly Smith, published in June Jordan’s Poetry for the People: A Revolutionary Blueprint. It is 'Deciding whom to publish, whose words are important or good or right, whose message is valuable, is about politics. Self-publishing is about power, about taking the responsibility to disseminate your words yourself.'   Editor and Social Media Manager: Mitchel Davidovitz   Sound of Waves Breaking: "Larks in Limburg, Netherlands.mp3" by @robkuster

In this episode, I spoke with KB about their zine “A New Relationship to Pain,” their relationship to poetry, the pandemic, working as a poet and educator, and more.

KB is from Stop Six, Fort Worth, Texas. They are a Black queer nonbinary poet, educator, student affairs professional, and lover of most plants/people. They want to be your friend as well as your reminder to think in abundance. They have words published in Cincinnati Review, Puerto Del Sol, Palette Poetry, and other equally pretty places. Their chapbook How To Identify Yourself with a Wound (Kallisto Gaia Press, 2022) won the 2020 Saguaro Poetry Prize and was written with support from workshops with Lambda Literary, In Surreal Life, The Watering Hole, The Hurston/Wright Foundation, The Speakeasy Project, and Winter Tangerine. They are currently a 2021 PEN America Emerging Writers fellow and an African American Leadership Institute - Austin fellow.

When not on stage or in the page, they serve as Program Coordinator for the Gender and Sexuality Center at the University of Texas at Austin, Founding Executive Director of Interfaces, Co-Founder/President of Embrace Austin, and educator in various settings. Follow them on Twitter or Instagram at @earthtokb and access their exclusive teaching, writing, and other content at patreon.com/earthtokb. They live in Austin, TX where they’re writing books & trying their best.

KB’s Zine “a new relationship to pain”

KB’s Instagram

KB’s Twitter

Poets, books, etc. mentioned in this episode:

• Jericho Brown’s The Tradition

• Taylor Byas's poetry 

• George Abraham’s "ars poetica in which every pronoun is a Free Palestine” (second poem on this page)

• Justin Phillip Reed’s "Leaves of Grass"

• Claudia Delfina Cardona’s “What Remains"

• Khalypso’s “You Really Seem to Think I’ll Miss You”

The Sound of Waves Breaking is “DesertTexasT01” by Riabad

Editor and Social Media Manager: Mitchel Davidovitz

In this episode I spoke with Rainie Oet about their recent publication Glorious Veils of Diane.

Content warning: We talk a lot about blood and some about self-harming

Rainie Oet is a nonbinary writer and game designer, former Editor-in-Chief of Salt Hill Journal, and the author of Glorious Veils of Diane (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2021), as well as two other books: Porcupine in Freefall and Inside Ball Lightning. They have an MFA in Poetry from Syracuse University, where they were awarded the Shirley Jackson Prize in Fiction. 

• Rainie's website
• Rainie's Twitter
• Go buy Glorious Veils of Diane
• Rainie's Inside Ball Lightning
• Rainie's Porcupine in Freefall 

Artists, books, films, games etc. mentioned in this episode:

• Diane Arbus
• Blood elemental in D&D
• Serena Perrone's "In Our Cinematic Lives"  
• Ladybird, film
• David Lynch movies
• Collected Poems by Zbigniew Herbert which includes the translated Hermes, Dog and Star.
• "The Little Box" by Vasko Popa
• Chase Berggrun's R E D
  • My interview with Chase about R E D
• Dragula, TV Show
• 최호소 HOSO Terra Toma, drag performer 
• Yume Nikki, indie game
• Octavia Butler's Lilith's Brood series
• Merlin Sheldrake's Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures

The Sound of Waves Breaking: "Sanchon Drum - Seoul Korea" by RTB45

 

Editor and Social Media Manager: Mitchel Davidovitz

In this episode, I dive deep into one poem with its authors, Anaïs Duplan and imogen xtian smith. Tune in for our conversation about of art, love, and utopias.

Anaïs Duplan is a trans* poet, curator, and artist. He is the author of a book of essays, Blackspace: On the Poetics of an Afrofuture (Black Ocean, 2020), a full-length poetry collection, Take This Stallion (Brooklyn Arts Press, 2016), and a chapbook, Mount Carmel and the Blood of Parnassus (Monster House Press, 2017). He has taught poetry at the University of Iowa, Columbia University, Sarah Lawrence College, and St. Joseph’s College.

His video works have been exhibited by Flux Factory, Daata Editions, the 13th Baltic Triennial in Lithuania, Mathew Gallery, NeueHouse, the Paseo Project, and will be exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Art in L.A in 2021.

As an independent curator, he has facilitated curatorial projects in Chicago, Boston, Santa Fe, and Reykjavík. He was a 2017-2019 joint Public Programs fellow at the Museum of Modern Art and the Studio Museum in Harlem. In 2016, he founded the Center for Afrofuturist Studies, an artist residency program for artists of color, based at Iowa City’s artist-run organization Public Space One. He works as Program Manager at Recess.

• An's website
• An's Twitter
• An's Instagram

imogen xtian smith (fka xtian w) is a poet & performer. Recent work is featured or forthcoming in Peach Mag, Cosmonauts Ave, the Rumpus, & WE WANT IT ALL: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics. They live in Brooklyn.

• imogen's Twitter
• imogen's Instagram

Places, people, art, books etc. mentioned in this episode:

• We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics, ed. by Andrea Abi-Karam and Kay Gabriel
  • An interview I did a while back with Kay Gabriel and the other editors of Vetch
  • An interview I did with Andrea Abi-Karam
• Berl's Brooklyn Poetry Shop
• Take This Stallion
• An and imogen's Trans Oral History project
• Mohammed Zenia's Tel Aviv
  • imogen's review for Tel Aviv for the Poetry Project
• Posthumous selected works of Wanda Coleman, Wicked Enchantments
• Bernadette Mayer's Midwinter Day
• Terrance Hayes
• Bahar Orang's Where Things Touch: A Meditation on Beauty

Editor and Social Media Manager: Mitchel Davidovitz

The Sound of Waves Breaking is "Gymnasium, Class Reunion in Distance" by ecfike. Meeting people in-person and hugging after a long period of time? I miss that and them.

In this episode I spoke with noor ibn najam about her recent work and writing process. they also discussed showing work to friends and skill-sharing. Sorry that the intro and outro audio is a little wonky this time around, but my interview with noor is still good.

noor is a poet who teases, challenges, breaks, and creates language. she's received fellowships from Callaloo and The Watering Hole and is a recent resident of the Vermont Studio Center. her poems have been published and anthologized with DIAGRAM, ANMLY, The Academy of American Poets, the Rumpus, Bettering American Poetry, and others. her chapbook, PRAISE TO LESSER GODS OF LOVE, was published by Glass Poetry Press in 2019.

noor’s website

purchase Praise to Lesser Gods of Love

noor’s Patreon

Writers, poems, books, events mentioned in this episode:

• The Arab Apocalypse, by Etel Adnan

• noor's poem "questions arabic asked in english (colonial fit)”

• an interview of Douglas Kearney where he discusses compositional hierarchy

• “I am an artist and I'm sensitive about my shit,” a lyric from Erykah Badu ‘s “Tyrone.”

• Zong! by M. NourbeSe Philip

• “The Secret Name,” by W.S. Graham

• وسوس Arabic for "whispers of the devil in your ear"

• khaleel, artist and noor’s partner

• Qil, Astro-Black Metalbender behind the jewlery line BLACKMARZIAN

• Keziah Harrell, painter

• Jamal Jones on Twitter

• kiki nicole

  • here’s an interview kiki and I recorded last year

• noor’s Skill Swaps

The Sound of Waves Breaking is “Walking on Snow,” recorded by rivernile7.

Editor and Social Media Manager: Mitchel Davidovitz