Episode 17: Natalie Diaz and Roger Reeves
Rachel Zucker talks with poets Natalie Diaz and Roger Reeves right before all three of them are about to read at a poetry event called “Love, especially love,” organized by Natalie Diaz and held at NYC’s Housingworks Cafe. The three talk about racism, family, the family that poetry makes, long poems v. shorter, self-contained poems, getting in the way, taking up space, risk, pleasure, joy, public/private, spectacle, spectator and poetry of witness. They also talk about the artists and writers who inspire them, including the painter Kerry James Marshall, and about Standing Rock, native poets, how to fight and the essential importance of love.
Books by Natalie Diaz
When My Brother Was an Aztec (Copper Canyon Press, 2012)
Books by Roger Reeves
King Me (Copper Canyon Press, 2013)
Other Authors/Artists/Books Mentioned in the Episode
Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth Century America by Saidiya Hartman (Oxford University Press, 1997)
This is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt is Shaping the Twenty-First Century by Mark and Paul Engler (Nation Books, 2016)
Other Relevant Links
Housing Works (you can also shop via Housing Works’ Amazon Bookstore; a portion of the sale will go to them!)
"The Work of Art in the Age of Ferguson, Baltimore, and Charleston,” a craft talk by Roger Reeves
