Christopher Spaide speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about his poem “Closure?,” which appears in The Common’s most recent issue. Chris talks about how his curiosity for language and wordplay often lead him into deeper themes in his poems. He also discusses taking his first poetry class at Amherst College, and, now, teaching poetry classes himself at Emory University.

Christopher Spaide is the N.E.H. Postdoctoral Fellow in Poetics at the Bill and Carol Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry at Emory University. He received his Ph.D. from the Department of English at Harvard University and was a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows. His poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in The Nation, Ploughshares, Poetry, The Sewanee Review, and elsewhere. He was a 2022–2023 writer in residence at the James Merrill House, and he currently reviews for the Poetry Foundation at Harriet Books.

Read Chris’s poems “Closure?” and “The Yoke’s on Us” in The Common here.

Follow Chris on Twitter @cspaide and learn more about him at christopherspaide.com.

The Common is a print and online literary magazine publishing stories, essays, and poems that deepen our collective sense of place. On our podcast and in our pages, The Common features established and emerging writers from around the world. Read more and subscribe to the magazine at thecommononline.org, and follow us on Twitter @CommonMag.

Emily Everett is managing editor of the magazine and host of the podcast. Her debut novel is forthcoming from Putnam Books. Her stories appear in the Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, Tin House Online, and Mississippi Review. She is a 2022 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow in Fiction.

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Madame Marie Delphine LaLaurie