Episode 40: Kaveh Akbar
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.
Books by Kaveh Akbar
Calling a Wolf a Wolf (Alice James, 2017)
Portrait of the Alcoholic (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2017)
Other Books and Writers Mentioned in the Episode
Ellen 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)
Other Relevant Materials
