INTERVIEWS
An Unwitting Pariah: Kathryn Hummel in Conversation with Kaiser Haq
At the close of his poem ‘Autumn Fragment’, Kaiser Haq asks: ‘Can one write / Verse that is free of ambiguity?’ A more pointed consideration for contemporary writers hailing from Bangladesh is whether perhaps one should.
‘We mirror what we see’: Holly Childs Interviews Cristine Brache
Cristine Brache is a Toronto-based poet and artist. Her work explores the nuanced power dynamics inherent in many of our relationships. Brache’s practice incorporates video, sculpture, poetry and a multitude of limited edition objects, prints, t-shirts and publications.
‘Refusing to be published, refusing even to perish’: Amelia Dale Interviews Ouyang Yu
Ouyang Yu, now based between Melbourne and Shanghai, came to Australia in mid-April 1991 and, by early 2018, has published 96 books of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, literary translation and literary criticism in English and Chinese. He also edits Australia’s only Chinese literary journal, Otherland.
‘Myth is not merely decorative’: Prithvi Varatharajan Interviews Michelle Cahill
The subject of my interview with Cahill is her second book of poems, Vishvarūpa, which is a highly unusual book by a contemporary Australian poet. In Vishvarūpa Cahill reanimates figures from ancient Hindu mythology.
Sandra D’Urso Interviews Fiona Hile
To read Hile’s poetry is to encounter what it means to be a desiring subject in a contemporary world. Her use of vernacular recalls and transforms the details of everyday life, while gesturing toward the grand themes of a European philosophical tradition.
‘I have never understood a single poem’: Chi Tran Interviews Mei-mei Berssenbrugge
What has come to light from my exchanges with Berssenbrugge is that there is no singular way to understand her work. Perhaps drawing lines around and across differences in understandings poses a bit of a problem (not necessarily one to be solved as such, but to be thought and written through) and only directs us back into a canonical way of thinking, instead of propelling us forward and out.
‘A Fable for Now’: Kate Fagan Interviews Lyn Hejinian
In July, 2014, the American poet Lyn Hejinian visited Australia to participate in two events – the ‘Women’s Writing and Environments: 2014 Contemporary Women’s Writing Association Conference’ at the State Library of Melbourne, where she headlined alongside fellow keynotes Alexis Wright, Chris Kraus and Deborah Bird Rose.
‘through worlds & worlds & worlds’: Joan Fleming interviews Jordie Albiston
I first met Albiston in a taxicab in Wellington in November of 2014. When she learned that ‘Fleming’s pool’ near her home in Altona is named after my direct ancestors, she said, ‘All right, no more conversation now.
Archiving the Present: Ivy Alvarez Interviews Conchitina Cruz
From November 2016 to April 2017, I corresponded with Cruz over email. Commensurate with an ongoing political emergency, and in the face of turmoil and bloodshed in the Philippines, this conversation is, out of necessity, open-ended.
‘The concept of risk is intensely personal’: Jonno Révanche Interviews Hera Lindsay Bird
New Zealand writer Hera Lindsey Bird has been described as many things in recent times: an internet poet, a crisp new voice in a constantly shifting medium, the sole cause of poetry’s demise, a conspirator and revolutionary, historical necromancer, albatross, a stern jewellery thief.
‘We can wake up if we wish’: Autumn Royal Interviews Cecilia Vicuña
Cecilia Vicuña is a multidisciplinary Chilean artist who describes her practice as dwelling in the not yet. Vicuña forms and disentangles meaning with poetry, oral performances, filmmaking, criticism and activism.
Ainslie Templeton Interviews Christopher (Loma) Soto
Christopher Soto (aka Loma) is a Brooklyn-based poet who has received several awards for his writing and activism. Most notably, he is the author of the chapbook Sad Girl Poems, which discusses his experiences with domestic violence and queer youth homelessness.
Interview with Sidney Nolan (Ella O’Keefe edit)
Hazel de Berg’s recordings take place in the homes or work spaces of the subjects rather than a recording studio. This allows something of these places into the recording whether birdsong, traffic or an r&b song playing in the background.
Hannah Hall Interviews Omar Musa
After the panel, I arrived at Musa’s table in time to see him reach into a bag and pull out a stack of his new CDs and place them on the table for sale. ‘I don’t know if I’m allowed to do this, but I figure I can give it a go’ he said. Much like his art, Musa shifts and grooves between the personas of rapper, novelist and poet.
‘I lift the house / of language, allow doubt / to whoosh in’: A Conversation with Tommy ‘Teebs’ Pico
The book-length poem of IRL is told through the voice Tommy Pico’s charming alter ego: ‘Teebs’. IRL is composed of sentence fragments, run-on ramblings, Internet slang, shorthand and emoticons; it’s sweaty and compulsive.
Elena Gomez Interviews Jasmine Gibson
Jasmine Gibson is a Philly jawn now living in Brooklyn and a soon to be psychotherapist for all your gooey psychotic episodes that match the bipolar flows of capital. She spends her time thinking about sexy things like psychosis, desire and freedom.
I met Jasmine in New York earlier this year where she spoke as part of a panel with Commune Editions editors Juliana Spahr, Joshua Clover and Jasper Bernes, about activism and poetry. Her chapbook Drapetomania (Commune Editions) had me in its grip and I wanted to find out more from Jasmine about the themes in her poetry and work as an activist, and the way those two aspects of her practice reproduce each other.
Playing with Light and Dark: Amy Hilhorst Interviews David McCooey
I first became interested in David McCooey’s work while studying an Honours unit at the University of Western Australia, where for an assessment I responded to his essay on Chris Wallace-Crabbe’s poetry, only to learn that he too had taken the same unit some years before.
Jesse Nathan Interviews August Kleinzahler
One day in early July, I took the N-Judah over from the Sunset, where I live, to meet him at Finnegans Wake, a bar he likes that’s not far from his apartment. We drank beer and recorded a conversation.
Rilke, Cavafy, Hölderlin: Simeon Kronenberg Interviews Luke Fischer
The following interview mostly took place between June and October 2015, mainly via email. Luke was traveling in Europe during much of this period.
We Need to Talk about Caste: Roanna Gonsalves Interviews S Anand
It was a cool inner west Sydney evening in May 2015, alive with families out to dinner and bookshops open late. It was also one week after four Dalits were sexually abused, murdered, and their homes set on fire in Rajasthan, India, and three weeks before a Dalit girl in a village in Madhya Pradesh, India was beaten up because her shadow fell on an upper caste man.
Christy Dena Interviews Eric Zimmerman
Eric Zimmerman is a game designer, academic and educator. He makes digital games, analogue games, installations, experimental narrative games, has written non-fiction books that are key texts in universities and is the founding faculty at the NYU Game Center.
Aden Rolfe Interviews Eliot Weinberger
While the prevailing formula for the contemporary essay seems to be information plus thesis – a collection of facts held together by authorial intentions – Eliot Weinberger’s approach is striking for a deceptively simple difference.
Interview with Laurie Duggan (Ella O’Keefe edit)
Hazel de Berg’s recordings take place in the homes or work spaces of the subjects rather than a recording studio. This allows something of these places into the recording whether birdsong, traffic or an r&b song playing in the background.
Robert Wood Interviews Alan Loney
I first met Alan Loney at the University of Pennsylvania in 2004. I was studying there at the time and Alan had been invited as a guest of Robert Creeley at SUNY Buffalo.
