Episode 35: Aracelis Girmay

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Rachel Zucker speaks with poet Aracelis Girmay about creating new forms and structures, employing fragments, the time it takes to get to urgent questions, research, patience, appreciating snails with Kamau Brathwaite, menarche, estrangement, pregnancy, naming, our fathers and families, worrying about doing harm in poems, effort, June Jordan, Ross Gay, writing about family, history, avoiding and countering the language of violence and brutality, writing long poems and find ways to express anger and rage without adopting the language of tyranny and oppression.

Books by Aracelis Girmay

• The Black Maria (BOA Editions, 2016)

• Kingdom Animalia (BOA Editions, 2011)

• Teeth (Curbstone, 2007)

• Changing, Changing (George Braziller, 2005)

Other Books and Writers Mentioned in the Episode

• Monticello in Mind: Fifty Contemporary Poems on Jefferson by Lisa Russ Spaar (University of Virginia Press, 2016)

• Kamau Brathwaite

• June Jordan

• Ross Gay

• James Baldwin

• Joy Harjo

• Shane McCrae

Other Relevant Links

• Dodge Poetry Festival

• Poetry Society of America: Aracelis Girmay (New American Poets)

• End of Kingdom Animalia — “Ars Poetica”

• Interview with Rosa Alcalá and Eduardo C. Corral  

• Arielle’s Greenberg’s article in American Poetry Review on Shane McCrae

• Aracelis’s poem “You Are Who I Love,” written for Split this Rock

• Review of Aracelis’ book The Black Maria by Tara Betts in APR

• Poetry Society of America, Latino/a Poetry Now: 3 poets discuss their art (Aracelis Girmay, Rosa Alcalá, Eduardo C. Corral