Rachel Zucker speaks with Kaveh Akbar about his first full-length poetry collection, Calling a Wolf a Wolf. They talk about recovery, addiction, Ellen Bryant Voigt’s unpunctuated line, teaching, his writing process for poetry or prose, the hutzpah and/or cluelessness that enabled him to reach out to established poets, the founding and process of running Divedapper.com (Kaveh’s interview site), the art of interviewing, using poetry to press the pleasure button, social media, white poets writing about whiteness, writing to delight, writing with compassion, his poem “Heritage” (about Reyhaneh Jabbari), the potential violence of erasure poems, and the intersection of power and poetry.
EXTRA MATERIALS FOR EPISODE 40Books by Kaveh AkbarCalling a Wolf a Wolf (Alice James, 2017)
Portrait of the Alcoholic (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2017)
Other Books and Writers Mentioned in the EpisodeEllen Bryant Voigt’s Headwaters (W.W. Norton, 2014)
The Rag-Picker's Guide to Poetry: Poems, Poets, Process (University of Michigan Press, 2013)
Robert Olen Butler’s Severance (Chronicle Books, 2008)
Lauren Oliver’s ROOMS (Ecco, 2015)
Tom Phillips’ A Humument (Thames and Hudson, 2017)
Charles Reznikoff’s Testimony (Black Sparrow Press, 2015)
Lauren Whitehead
Ross Gay
WS Merwin
Jean Valentine
Li-Young Lee
Jorie Graham
Lucille Clifton
Lucie Brock-Broido
Zbigniew Herbert
Chris Forhan
Dan Barden
Yusef Komunyakaa
Franz Wright
Robert Bly
Afaa Michael Weaver
Dorianne Laux
Fady Joudah
Sharon Olds
Philip Metres
Ilya Kaminsky
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Jake Adam York
Adrian Matejka
John Berryman
Robert Lowell
Bob Hicok
Tarfia Faizullah
Solmaz Sharif
Robin Coste Lewis
Major Jackson “A Mystifying Silence: Big and Black”
Other Relevant MaterialsPaige Lewis
Butler University MFA
The Quirk
All Up in Your Ears (Jonathan Farmer, Gabrielle Calvocoressi, francine j. Harris and Kaveh Akbar)
Poets House
Sarah Miller Freehauf
Kaveh writing about his poem “Heritage” on Poetry Society
Transcription of the final voice message of Reyhaneh Jabbari
Kenneth Goldsmith
Vanessa Place
Eula Biss talking about opportunity hoarding on the podcast The Longest Shortest Time
Sandra Bland
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