Of Poetry Podcast - Len Lawson (Of Asylums, Poetic Histories, and Rest)

Len Lawson (Of Asylums, Poetic Histories, and Rest)

05/17/23 • 65 min

Of Poetry Podcast

Read: "Psychology for Black Folk" at Jasper Project

Purchase: Negro Asylum for the Lunatic Insane (Main Street Rag, 2023)

Len Lawson is author of Negro Asylum for the Lunatic Insane (Main Street Rag, 2023), Chime (Get Fresh Books, 2019), and the chapbook Before the Night Wakes You (Finishing Line Press, 2017). He is also co-editor of The Future of Black: Afrofuturism, Black Comics, and Superhero Poetry (Blair Press, 2021) and Hand in Hand: Poets Respond to Race (Muddy Ford Press, 2017). South Carolina Humanities awarded him a 2022 Governor's Award for Fresh Voices in the Humanities. He has received fellowships from Tin House, Palm Beach Poetry Festival, Callaloo Barbados, Vermont Studio Center, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts among others. His poetry appears in African American Review, Callaloo, Mississippi Review, Ninth Letter, Verse Daily, Poetry Northwest, and has been translated internationally. Len earned a Ph.D. in English Literature and Criticism at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. A South Carolina native, he is currently Assistant Professor of English at Newberry College.

More reading recommended from this episode:

Joshua Bennett's Being Property Once Myself

Nikky Finney's Love Child's Hotbed of Occasional Poetry: Poems and ArtifactsHonorée Fannon Jeffers The Age of Phillis

Read: "Psychology for Black Folk" at Jasper Project

Purchase: Negro Asylum for the Lunatic Insane (Main Street Rag, 2023)

More reading recommended from this episode:

Joshua Bennett's Being Property Once Myself

Nikky Finney's Love Child's Hotbed of Occasional Poetry: Poems and ArtifactsHonorée Fannon Jeffers The Age of Phillis

Previous Episode

Caelan Ernest (Of Cyborgs and Parties, Publicity, and Transcending Binaries)

Read: “put ur phone down for a sec” from night mode in Blush Lit

Purchase: night mode (Everybody Press, 2023)

Caelan Ernest is a poet and a performer. They are the author of two forthcoming collections: night mode and ICONOCLAST, being published in 2023 and 2024 respectively by Everybody Press. They received their MFA in Writing from Pratt Institute. They are Publicist at Graywolf Press. They live in Brooklyn with their cat named Salad.

More reading and viewing recommendations from this episode:

Donna Haraway's A Cyborg Manifesto

Bladerunner

r. erica doyl's Proxy

Wings of Desire

Carl Phillips' My Trade is Mystery

Next Episode

Destiny Hemphill (Of Ritual, Tenderness, and Speculative Nonfiction)

Listen: On Apple, Spotify, Google and elsewhere

Read: "we ask mama-n-em, 'where is the motherworld?'" (Split This Rock)

Purchase: motherworld: a devotion for the alter-life (action books, 2023)

Destiny Hemphill (she/her) is a ritual worker and poet based in Durham, NC. A recipient of fellowships from Naropa University’s Summer Writing Program, Callaloo, Tin House, and Kenyon’s Writers Workshop, she is the author of the poetry chapbook Oracle: a Cosmology (Honeysuckle Press, 2018), and her debut Motherworld: a devotional for the alter-life (Actionbooks, 2023).

More reading recommended from this episode:

Mushroom at the End of the World by Anna Tsing

Heartberries by Teresa Marie Mailhot