Waves Breaking Avren Keating

Finally, after a long break, Waves Breaking returns with this interview with Kamden Ishmael Hilliard. Kam generously shares their time with me to discuss their debut book of poems, MissSettl, out last year with Nightboat Books. We go in deep to discuss their thoughts around the sentence, modes of speech, writing poems within this current era of late-stage capitalism, and teaching students.
Kamden Ishmael Hilliard was born in La Jolla, CA; their fam settled on O'ahu, Hawai'i. Kamden holds a BA in American Studies from the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa and an MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Kamden, a nonbinary Black settler who goes by Kam, works on issues of surveillance, race, queerness, contemporary art and American politics. They're thankful for support from The National YoungArts Foundation, The Davidson Institute, Sarah Lawrence College, and The UCROSS Foundation. Kam’s writing appears in West Branch, The Black Warrior Review, Tagvverk, Denver Quarterly, The Columbia Review, and other publications.
 
Formerly, they served as an AmeriCorps VISTA, held Maytag, Teaching-Writing, and Pfluflaught Fellowships at the University of Iowa, and were the 2020-2022 Anisfield-Wolf Fellow in Publishing and Writing at the Cleveland State University Poetry Center, a reader at Flypaper Lit, and a board member at VIDA: Women In Literary Arts.

Kamden's website
Kamden's Instagram
Go buy MissSettl!
Mentioned in the interview:
Joyelle McSweeney
Jayson P. Smith
“Poem About My Rights” by June Jordan
bell hooks
Hoodie Allen (I’m sorry lol)
Skee-Lo
Punahou School Hawaii
Iowa Writers Workshop and the Cold War
James Baldwin
Nene (bird)
The nene population is on the rebound from its endangered status
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Huge plug for everyone to listen to the audiobook version of Beloved read by Toni Morrison herself. Find it on Libby!
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson
Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (film)
My poem with Judge Doom in it is “After Saturn Ate His Own Kid” at the bottom of this page.
West Side Story (film)
Goodbye, Vitamin by Rachel Khong
Kam’s Anti-recommendations:
Apocalypse Now (film)
The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
The Sandman (TV series)
This show's Editor and Social Media Manager is Mitchel Davidovitz. 
The Sound of Waves Breaking is a clip of my cousin Ian and me (fake band name: Diminutive Denizens) doing a cover of “Dig My Grave” by They Might Be Giants. It’s on this cover album of Apollo 18 if you want to listen to the whole thing. There are a bunch of other covers you can listen to there for free, including a very dumb skit my friend Greg and I did for one of the “Fingertips.” Greg’s the host of the excellent podcast This Might Be a Podcast which I’ve also guested on many times. Check it out!

Photo of Yanyi, taken by him
In this episode I spoke with Yanyi about his new book, Dream of the Divided Field, and his newsletter, The Reading.
Yanyi is the author of Dream of the Divided Field (One World Random House, 1 March 2022) and The Year of Blue Water (Yale University Press 2019), winner of the 2018 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize. His work has been featured in or at NPR’s All Things Considered, New York Public Library, Granta, and New England Review, and he is the recipient of fellowships from Asian American Writers’ Workshop and Poets House. He holds an MFA in Poetry from New York University and was most recently poetry editor at Foundry. Currently, he teaches creative writing at large and gives writing advice at The Reading.
Yanyi's website
You can purchase Dream of the Divided Field here
Yanyi's Twitter
Yanyi's Instagram
Various books, movies, podcasts, etc. mentioned in this episode:
Algorithm crowd sounds
Surviving R. Kelly docuseries
Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew
AI generated imagery
@images_ai
WOMBO Dream
DALL-E
Virgina Woolf’s audio BBC interview
When We Were Young Festival and its much parodied poster
Black Mountain Poets
Olson’s "Projective Verse" manifesto, some explicit field talk
Lydia Davis’s "Hand" story (this is the whole story lol):
"Beyond the hand holding this book that I’m reading, I see another hand lying idle and slightly out of focus — my extra hand."
(more stories here)
"The Cows" chapbook
Yanyi's newsletter
Letter on why he left Substack
Yanyi at the Poetry Project discussing de las Rivas's "Black Sun" and fascist dogwhistling in contemporary poetry
Ghost, the platform Yanyi uses to now send his newsletters
bell hooks’s Teaching to Transgress full PDF
Tell Them Anything You Want: A Portrait of Maurice Sendak documentary
Laura Engels Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie series
FEELING ASIAN podcast episodes:
An Evening With Two Asian Therapists (feat. Peter Adams, Ph.D and Melissa Yao, Ph.D)
Asian Seeking Asian (therapists)
 
Editor and Social Media Manager: Mitchel Davidovitz
Host and Producer: Avren Keating
Sound of Waves Breaking: Sounds from this video of Merlin, my sweet 5-year-old Frenchie that died of a brain tumor in the time between recording and editing this episode. I love you, little bubs. 

In this interview, I spoke with Sarah Nnenna Loveth Nwafor about their latest publication Already Knew You Were Coming. We discuss Igbo cosmology and time, vengeance poetry, their process in writing this chapbook, and more.
Sarah Nnenna Loveth Nwafor (They/Them) is a queer Igbo-American Poet, Educator, and Facilitator who descends of a powerful ancestry. They believe that storytelling is magick, and they speak to practice traditions of Igbo orature. When they witness, their forebears are pleased. Sarah has been writing for a minute and is learning something new about their voice each year, but one thing they’re proud to share is that they have a chapbook out with Game Over Books! When Sarah's not writing; they’re probably sitting under a tree, reading about Love, dancing with friends or cooking a bomb-ass meal like the true Taurus they are.
Go buy Already Knew You Were Coming
Sarah’s Instagram
Sarah’s website
Books, artists, musicians, etc. mentioned in this episode:
Mithsuca Berry
Alexis Pauline Gumbs’s Dub: Finding Ceremony
Sister Love: The Letters of Audre Lorde and Pat Parker 1974-1989
I.S. Jones’s Spells of My Name
Nwaobiala
Dena Igutsi’s Cut Woman
Editor and Social Media Manager: Mitchel Davidovitz
Host and Producer: Avren Keating
Sound of Waves Breaking: Melody Loop 95 BPM, DaveJf

In this episode, I spoke with Cody-Rose Clevidence about their latest publication, Aux Arc / Trypt Ich, out with Nightboat Books. We dug into language, exploring motif, grief, love—all that good stuff. 
Cody-Rose Clevidence is the author of BEAST FEAST (2014) and Flung/Throne (2018), both from Ahsahta Press, Listen My Friend This is the Dream I Dreamed Last Night from The Song Cave and Aux Arc / Trypt Ich as well as several handsome chapbooks (flowers and cream, NION, garden door press, Auric).  They live in the Arkansas Ozarks with their medium sized but lion-hearted dog, Birdie and an absolute lunatic cat.  
Cody-Rose's Instagram
Buy Aux Arc / Trypt Ich!
Poets, books, etc. mentioned in this episode:
Cody-Rose Clevidence's BEAST FEAST  Turquoise waters of the Ozarks "Apophatic" was the word I was trying to remember! I can't read this work because of the paywall, but it seems like it might be useful in exploring Manley Hopkins's contemplations of God. 
H.D.
Homer
Algernon Charles Swinburne
William Wordsworth
English literature's Romanticism  Gerard Manley Hopkins Stephen Taylor's Building Thoreau's Cabin Jerome Rothenberg (editor), Technicians of the Sacred 
Jerome Rothenberg (editor), Shaking the Pumpkin: Traditional Poetry of the Indian North Americas Guy Deutscher's The Unfolding of Language Guy Deutscher's Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's Metaphors We Live By  
Editor and Social Media Manager: Mitchel Davidovitz
Host and Producer: Avren Keating
Sound of Waves Breaking: "Arkansas" by John Linnell. At last, one half of TMBG makes it onto the pod.

In this episode, I spoke with féi hernandez about Hood Criatura, their poetry collection released in 2020. We also spoke about their incredible skills as an illustrator, and féi recommends some fantastic reads.
féi hernandez (b.1993 Chihuahua, Mexico) is a trans, Inglewood- raised, formerly undocumented immigrant artist, writer, healer. They have been published in POETRY, Pank Magazine, Oxford Review of Books, Frontier Poetry, The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext, amongst others. They are a Define American Fellow for 2021 and are currently the Board President of Gender Justice Los Angeles. féi is the author of the full-length poetry collection Hood Criatura (Sundress Publications 2020) which was on NPR’s Best Books of 2020. féi collects Pokémon plushies.
féi’s website
féi’s instagram
Purchase Hood Criatura
Poets, books, etc. mentioned in this episode:
Gloomy the Naughty Grizzly, anime series
Sailor Moon, anime series
Natalie Diaz’s My Brother Was an Aztec
Natalie Diaz’s Postcolonial Love Poem
Ambar Lucid and her song “Story to Tell”
féi’s illustrations Hood Criatura on Goodreads, Barnes and Noble, and Amazon. Go leave a review :)
Editor and Social Media Manager: Mitchel Davidovitz
The Sound of Waves Breaking is “Project - 3_30_21, 6.55 PM.wav” by bradygalp123

In this episode, I spoke with Larkin Christie about their book gather all your supple creatures. 
Larkin Christie is a queer poet living on unceded Pocumtuc land in what is currently known as Western Massachusetts. Their second collection, gather all your supple creatures, is out now. Their creative work draws on experiences as an educator, organizer, and dancer. 
Larkin's website
Larkin's Instagram
Go buy gather all your supple creatures!
 
Quotes, workshop, and media mentioned in this episode:
In Surreal Life, workshop
 
Honeyfitz, band
 
From Larkin: "I just did some research and the quote is actually by Shelly Smith, published in June Jordan’s Poetry for the People: A Revolutionary Blueprint. It is 'Deciding whom to publish, whose words are important or good or right, whose message is valuable, is about politics. Self-publishing is about power, about taking the responsibility to disseminate your words yourself.'
 
Editor and Social Media Manager: Mitchel Davidovitz
 
Sound of Waves Breaking: "Larks in Limburg, Netherlands.mp3" by @robkuster