Rachel Zucker speaks with poet, performer, educator and scholar Dr. Joshua Bennett about writing a poem for a friend’s wedding, the relationship between performance and page, growing up in South Yonkers and attending a largely white private school, the birth of Black Studies, creating alternative gathering and learning spaces, infiltrating established institutions, the June Jordan fellowship at Columbia’s Center for Justice, the writers and thinkers who inspire Bennett, and how to write about family and living people with respect and honesty.
EXTRA RESOURCES FOR EPISODE 34Books by Joshua BennettThe Sobbing School (Penguin, 2016)
Videos of JoshuaSpoken Wordsmith: Joshua Bennett, via Reebok
16 Bars for Kendrick Lamar, via The Strivers Row
Performing at the White House Poetry Jam
Other Books/Writers Mentioned in the EpisodeAchille Mbembe’s Critique of Black Reason (Duke University Press, 2017)
Jesmyn Ward’s “Salvage the Bones” (Bloomsbury, 2012)
Patricia Smith’s Incendiary Art (Triquarterly, 2017)
June Jordan’s Civil Wars (Touchstone, 1995)
Cornel West’s Race Matters (Vintage, 1994)
Theodor Adorno
Richard Wright
Toni Morrison
Zora Neale Hurston
James Baldwin
Jupiter Hammon
George Jackson
Lucille Clifton
Aja Mone
Carlos Andres Gomez
Elizabeth Acevedo
Tyehimba Jess
Phillis Wheatley
Ed Roberson
Dr. Jamall Calloway
Jason Craige Harris
Other Relevant LinksJoshua’s dissertation: “Being Property Once Myself: In Pursuit of the Animal in 20th Century African American Literature”
Joshua interviewed in Dissent Magazine
Kendrick Lamar
Sam Cook
June Jordan Fellowship at the Center for Justice at Columbia University
The Strivers Row
Michael J. Dumas
Sarah Lawrence College Poetry Festival
Episode 121: Fred Moten and Ronaldo Wilson - Part 2
Episode 120: Fred Moten and Ronaldo V. Wilson
Episode 119: Eugenia Leigh's Bianca (KTCO feed drop)
Episode 118: Laurel Snyder
Episode 117: Charif Shanahan & Safia Elhillo with Isaac Ginsberg Miller
Episode 116: The Gathered Congregation
Episode 115: Moheb Soliman
Episode 114: Live & Embodied
113: Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Episode 112: Gabrielle Octavia Rucker with V Conaty
Episode 111: The Confessional Episode
Episode 110: The Poetics of Wrongness
Episode 109: Joy Harjo
Episode 108: Saeed Jones
Episode 107: Eileen Myles
Episode 106: S. Yarberry with V Conaty
Episode 105: Carl Phillips
Episode 104: The Critical Response Process with Liz Lerman & John Borstel
Episode 103: Cody-Rose Clevidence with Valentine Conaty
Episode 102: Rebekah Wolkstein
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
50 Tastes Of Gray
Dear Alice | Interior Design
Spider-Man Crawlspace Podcast
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Magnus Archives
The Moth