LISTEN TO EPISODE 117!

Dear Listener,

These are devastating days. 

It sometimes feels wrong, and, for lack of a better word, surreal, to be working on Commonplace, putting episodes out into the world and writing and sending you newsletters. But it also feels right and real. And lately, it’s felt, more than ever, like a privilege, honor and consolation to work on episodes for you. Thank you.

It is a delight to share episode 117 with you today.

This conversation between Safia Elhillo and Charif Shanahan (guest hosted by Isaac Ginsberg Miller) is about many things: seeing and being seen by others, intended audiences and ideal readers, inherited or received forms, experimentalism, the instability of racialized experience, and friendship.

During the conversation, Charif says that his poem “Fig Tree” is, among other things, about the fraught and interdependent relationship between language and identity. Charif points to this line in “Fig Tree”: “to ask how many languages you speak is to ask how many selves exist inside you,” and says to Isaac and Safia: “...it's my belief that the three selves that are communicating right now—that are talking to one another within the context of this interview—are not the selves that began this interview. We have shifted one another. We have changed things inside of one another. There is information that I've received listening and seeing the two of you that has shifted something that would be hard to account for. Within the context of a thirty minute conversation, your language evolves, right? You evolve…what I'm really trying to do with that poem is spell out the way that identity-pressurizing language plays out specifically within the context of poem making, and how that reflects back on identity or identities.”

Charif was talking about identity-pressurizing language in the context of poem making (and if you haven’t read “Fig Tree,” find it here—it’s an extraordinary poem!), but I have thought about this idea that we are changed significantly and deeply by each other and by language many times and in many contexts since hearing Charif say it.

I also love this moment from the conversation when Safia says, “So much of the fun for me in writing poems that contain elements of autobiography is to get to do the fun work of myth-making. I grew up reading a lot of Greek mythology. The takeaway from that wasn't so much like, oh, only people of this particular background are allowed to have mythology. It's just like, how fun would it be to get to turn that eye to the people and places and experiences of my own life. And to get to just turn that mythologizing eye onto the mundane facts of my own life… for me it was like mythology is a playground as an invitation to play to make something up—to envision, to dream instead of just feeling like my work as a poet was to like report the sad facts of history and my resulting traumas, you know. I have done that and will probably keep doing that. But… I'm allowed to do other things… I'm allowed to also play in my poems and have fun and make things up and dream and write a poem where a bunch of birds save a girl from being stomped to death. Sometimes my work as a poet is as a historian. But I think in doing that work for so long, I forgot that I'm also allowed to make things up.”

This conversation has moments of serious erudition, careful close reading, levity, and connection. I hope you find it as engaging and sustaining as I do.

For this episode some members of the Commonplace Book Club will receive a copy of The January Children by Safia Elhillo (courtesy of University of Nebraska Press), Girls That Never Die also by Safia Elhillo (courtesy of One World), Trace Evidence by Charif Shanahan (courtesy of Tin House), a signed copy of Stopgap by Isaac Ginsberg Miller (courtesy of the author), or a copy of the Black SWANA Issue—Issue 23.2—of Mizna Journal, guest-edited by Safia Elhillo and which features an interview with Charif Shanahan (courtesy of Mizna). 

All patrons will receive access to audio files of Safia and Charif reading a few of their incredible poems (including “How to Say” by Safia Elhillo, which was published on poem-a-day back in 2017) especially for you!

As a reminder, Commonplace has no ads, no corporate funding and no institutional support. It is made possible only through your support. To become a patron of commonplace please visit our Patreon page or make a one-time donation here. 

It’s not too late to sign up for “Reading with Rachel,” the newest course in The Commonplace School for Embodied Poetics. We have a terrific group of maker-participants but very few listener-only participants. For a limited time, I’ve decided to drop the price for the listener-only sessions for newsletter subscribers. You can sign up here. If you’d like to sign up as a maker for one or more sessions, please sign up here. And stay tuned for more great upcoming episodes including one with children’s book author Laurel Snyder and one with Fred Moten and Ronaldo Wilson!

A special thank you goes to Isaac Ginsberg Miller for all the help he’s given me and the podcast over the years, and for being such a careful and generous reader and interviewer. I’d like to thank Leigh Sugar who has been working on transcribing all the Commonplace episodes! 

During this conversation Safia says that one reason she wanted to be a poet, one reason she continues to be a poet, is to “get to hang out with other poets.” I started Commonplace and continue to record, produce and publish episodes because I want to hang out with other people who love books and art and ideas and conversations and who know how much language and listening can change us.

Thank you for being one of those people. 

With love,

Rachel