In this episode, Lissa speaks with Javon Johnson, about his new poetry collection, Ain't Never Not Been Black (Button Poetry, 2020). Javon Johnson, Ph.D. is a poet, performer, professor and recipient of numerous awards. According to poet Rudy Francisco, Dr. Johnson is “is one of the most brilliant writers in the world”. This conversation was recorded …
Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: Black Minnesota poets in response to the murder of George Floyd
One of the defining events of the past year, in Minnesota and around the world, was the murder of George Floyd and the international protests demanding justice. Though Mr. Floyd's murder was shocking, for many people it fit a pattern of racism and violence inflicted upon Black people and BIPOC communities in this country. In …
VIDEO: “Art can be liberating, art is redemptive, and art is healing,” Ibi Zoboi and Dr. Yusef Salaam on their YA novel-in-verse Punching the Air
"Hope is the thing that drives us forward," says Dr. Yusuf Salaam of naming his novel's main character Amal, which means hope. "Because without hope we wouldn't see a positive future, we wouldn't imagine the opportunity to change the criminal justice system from the criminal system of injustice to the criminal justice system." Dr. Salaam …
“Change comes one at a time” – author Claudia Rankine on her latest work, Just Us: An American Conversation
Launching the sixth season of BMR, Lissa sits down with poet and essayist Claudia Rankine to dive into her latest work Just Us: An American Conversation (Graywolf Press, 2020). Rankine describes the book as the result of a challenge she set to herself to talk to white men - a group she rarely talks to …
Poet, Essayist Justin Phillip Reed on The Malevolent Volume
"Poetry is present in pretty much every culture," says Reed. "It is present across class boundaries." But, he notes, depending on those boundaries it looks and acts differently. "I think there is a way that certain kinds of poetry are rewarded as literature and therefore are given a kind of visibility that ends up reifying …
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‘I want to read something that tells me about about the strength of black women, the joy of black women.’ – writer Debra J. Stone
In "Grandma Essie's Vanilla Pound Cake," writer Debra J. Stone remembers an important moment in her childhood, and Minnesota history, when the adults in the family grappled with the news that her grandparents' home in St. Paul's Rondo neighborhood, along with many others, would be destroyed to make way for the I-94 corridor. This pivotal …
‘In joy together’ with writer Ross Gay
On the (naturally) cold evening of March 5th we had the pleasure of speaking with Ross Gay and hearing him read from his most recent work, a book of essays entitled The Book of Delights (Algonquin Books, 2019), at Magers & Quinn Booksellers in Minneapolis, MN. The book is the result of a challenge that …
‘I was scared in a way that didn’t ask me to run from it, but asked me to stand in it’ – acclaimed poet Danez Smith on writing, mortality, and poetry as a medium for exploring the self
We are so excited to have finally had the opportunity to speak with award-winning poet and Minnesota native Danez Smith. Smith, who uses the pronouns they/them/their, spoke with host Lissa Jones about their genesis as a poet (they came to poetry through performance at Central High School in Saint Paul and credits renowned educator Jan …
‘So much of my life has been decided by people who didn’t want to imagine that I would be there’ – poet Julian Randall
"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you," writes Maya Angelou in her seminal work, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. In his award-winning debut collection, Refuse (emphasis on the first syllable, but used for its homographic ambiguity), the poet Julian Randall is beginning to tell the stories of his life, his …
“With each poem I had to say: how is this going to be different than the story they’re running from?” – poet Patricia Smith on her award-winning collection, ‘Incendiary Art’
"We have to figure out, not only some way to write the story, but how to draw people to the story and keep them in it," says poet and spoken word artist Patricia Smith of the work of poets in the fourth season premier of Black Market Reads - her most recent poetry collection, Incendiary …