LISTEN TO EPISODES 120 and 121!

Dear Listener,

I’m delighted to finally share episodes 120 and 121 with you!

Episode 120: is a conversation between me, Ronaldo V. Wilson and Fred Moten.

RONALDO V. WILSON, PhD, poet, interdisciplinary artist, and academic, is the author of Narrative of the Life of the Brown Boy and the White Man, winner of the Cave Canem Prize; Poems of the Black Object, winner of the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry and the Asian American Literary Award in Poetry; Farther Traveler: Poetry, Prose, Other, finalist for a Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry; and Lucy 72.  His latest books are Carmelina: Figures and Virgil Kills: Stories. The recipient of numerous fellowships, including Cave Canem, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Ford Foundation, Kundiman, MacDowell, The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, and Yaddo, Wilson is Professor of Creative Writing and Literature at U.C. Santa Cruz, serving on the core faculty of the Creative Critical PhD Program; principal faculty member of CRES (Critical Race and Ethnic Studies); and affiliate faculty member of DANM (Digital Arts and New Media).

Fred Moten’s latest projects are a poetry collection, Perennial Fashion Presence Falling (Wave Books), a record album, Fred Moten/Brandon López/Gerald Cleaver (Reading Group Records, 2022) and an essay collection, All Incomplete (Minor Compositions), co-authored with Stefano Harney, Xun Lee and Denise Ferreira da Silva. He is also the author of many other collections of poems and books of nonfiction including the consent not to be a single being trilogy of books published in 2017 and 2018 and A Poetics of the Undercommons published in 2016, all of which are mentioned in this episode and frequently mentioned with awe and love by many former Commonplace guests. Moten lives in New York and teaches in the Departments of Performance Studies and Comparative Literature at New York University.

I recorded this conversation at the Poetry Project at St Mark's Church in New York City on May 25, 2023. In it Fred, Ronaldo and I talk about their reading—also at The Poetry Project—the night before. Fred, Ronaldo and I talk about how each of them picked their setlist, when a reading begins and ends, the liveness or happeningness of readings and performance, the role of performance in their work, and much more. 

Episode 121 is a recording of Ronaldo and Fred’s May 24th reading.

The reading was full of surprises. Ronaldo interspersed his readings from his book Virgil Kills with multi-media work that included video, music and some movement. Fred Moten mostly read from his most recent book Perennial Fashion Presence Falling. In both of Fred and Ronaldo’s performances, the lines between what’s on the page in front of them, what is performance banter, what is audience interaction, what is improvisation or live composition are fluid and uncategorizable. The room was packed. The energy was high. There were so many people that some stood in the back and others, on the urging of Laura Henricksen, sat against the wall behind the readers. 

Here is a link to a video of the reading at Poetry Project, if you prefer watching to listening. For those of you who choose to listen, I want to say that if there are times when you’re listening to the audio of the reading and think, wait, what’s happening? Just go with it. Enjoy it. You’re going to have that feeling of not quite knowing what’s going on even if you watch the video. I had that feeling sitting in the live audience! That was part of the pleasure and excitement that made this reading so incredible. At any moment, I had no idea what was going to happen next. Sometimes I didn’t even know how to describe to myself what was happening even as I was watching and listening to it happen. In a way, the performance became a poem itself. This is partly what I’ve been trying to capture and describe with this series of episodes on performance. A great poetry reading is something far beyond getting to hear a poet read their work aloud. And this was a great poetry reading! 

For this episode, some members of the Commonplace book club will receive: the 3 book opus: consent not to be a single being by Fred Moten (courtesy of Duke University Press), perennial fashion presence falling by Fred Moten (courtesy of Wave Books), Carmelina: Figures by Ronaldo V. Wilson (courtesy of Wendy’s Subway), and Lucy 72 by Ronaldo V. Wilson (courtesy 1913 Press).

ALL Commonplace Patrons will get access to audio files from Fred Moten and Ronaldo V. Wilso, and, to an-end-of-year audio message from me that includes some thoughts about editing this episode and about the state of the podcast.

In honor of this episode our charitable partner will donate $250 to Project South chosen by Fred Moten and to Summer Workshops - FINE ARTS WORK CENTER in Provincetown chosen by Ronaldo Wilson.

If you’re not already a patron, please consider becoming one! Visit our website or our Patreon page. You can also make a one time donation to the show with the venmo link Rachel-Zucker. 

I’m happy to announce a thank you gift for Commonplace patrons and listeners, from Libro.fm, an independent purveyor of audiobooks. Libro (which is to audible what bookshop is to Amazon) has graciously offered THREE FREE AUDIOBOOK CREDITS to current $25/month Commonplace patrons, and to (up to six) new $25/month sign-ups. You do not need to have a libro.fm membership to claim these credits!

Existing $25/month patrons will soon receive an email with a link and code for you to claim your credits. The first six new $25/month patrons will also receive a unique link and code. Spread the word!

If you’re interested in starting a libro membership, follow this link! And then, when prompted, put in the promocode “commopod.” If you use the promo code you’ll get an extra free book when you sign up and you’ll be supporting Commonplace. 

Thank you to the publishers who have sent our book club members AMAZING books in 2023. Thank you to all the guests who shared their ideas and words and time with me. Thank you to Mike Sakasagawa and David Naimon, Christine Larusso, Leigh Sugar, V Conaty, and Vanessa Chung for helping to produce these episodes and being Commonplace cheerleaders.

I wish you an easy transition to 2024, and hope for good things in the new year.

As always,

Thank you for listening,

Rachel (& the Commonplace team)