The Poet Salon

Oh there you are, lovely. Last week, we chopped it up with worldwide sensation Danez Smith on reading for the National Book Awards, joy, and the violence necessary to achieve utopia. For this week's episode, they brought in Franny Choi's "Introduction to Quantum Theory" for us to discuss, and spoiler alert: it's a banger. DANEZ SMITH is a Black, Queer, Poz writer & performer from St. Paul, MN. Danez is the author of Don’t Call Us Dead (Graywolf Press, 2017), winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection, the Midwest Booksellers Choice Award, and a finalist for the National Book Award, and [insert] boy (YesYes Books, 2014), winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. They are the recipient of fellowships from the Poetry Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, the Montalvo Arts Center, Cave Canem, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Danez's work has been featured widely including on Buzzfeed, The New York Times, PBS NewsHour, Best American Poetry, Poetry Magazine, and on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Danez is a member of the Dark Noise Collective and is the co-host of VS with Franny Choi, a podcast sponsored by the Poetry Foundation and Postloudness. Danez’s third collection, Homie, will be published by Graywolf in Spring 2020. FRANNY CHOI is a writer, performer, and educator. She is the author of Floating, Brilliant, Gone (Write Bloody, 2014) and the chapbook Death by Sex Machine (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2017). She has been a finalist for multiple national poetry slams, and her poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, American Poetry Review, the New England Review, and elsewhere. She is a Kundiman Fellow, Senior News Editor for Hyphen, co-host of the podcast VS, and member of the Dark Noise Collective. Her second collection, Soft Science, is forthcoming from Alice James Books

You're back, dear listener, and just in time to hear us fangirl over fangirling, We also interview American treasure Danez Smith while sipping Hot Daddies.  DANEZ SMITH is a Black, Queer, Poz writer & performer from St. Paul, MN. Danez is the author of Don’t Call Us Dead (Graywolf Press, 2017), winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection, the Midwest Booksellers Choice Award, and a finalist for the National Book Award, and [insert] boy (YesYes Books, 2014), winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. They are the recipient of fellowships from the Poetry Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, the Montalvo Arts Center, Cave Canem, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Danez's work has been featured widely including on Buzzfeed, The New York Times, PBS NewsHour, Best American Poetry, Poetry Magazine, and on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Danez is a member of the Dark Noise Collective and is the co-host of VS with Franny Choi, a podcast sponsored by the Poetry Foundation and Postloudness. Danez’s third collection, Homie, will be published by Graywolf in Spring 2020.  THE HOT DADDY Fun fact! Langston Hughes’s favorite cocktail was one he invented called the ‘Hard Daddy.’ As described in a letter to a friend, the ‘Hard Daddy’ = whiskey, maple syrup, lemon juice, and ice. For our recording sesh with Danez Smith, we decided to make a hot version of this intriguingly named cocktail, subbing hot water for the ice and serving it in a cozy mug. Go generous with the lemon and light on the syrup and your taste buds will be happy. Pairs perfectly with cold winter Mondays, Ezell’s chicken, and this here episode.    INGREDIENTS: 2 oz Irish whiskey; fresh lemon; maple syrup; hot water  REFERENCES: 2018 National Book Award Poetry Finalists, The Fat Sonnets by Samantha Zighelboim, The Tradition by Jericho Brown, Youth Speaks Brave New Voices, "summer, somewhere", "Litany with Blood All Over" and "Not an Elegy" by Danez Smith; Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi; Heavy by Kiese Laymon

Welcome back, dearest. In last week’s episode, we spoke to Lena Khalaf Tuffaha about activism, home, language, and so much more. In this episode, Lena brought to The Poet Salon Mahmoud Darwish’s “To Our Land”. She was even kind enough to read it to us in the original Arabic. LENA KHALAF TUFFAHA is an American poet, writer, and translator of Palestinian, Jordanian, and Syrian heritage. She is the winner of the 2016 Two Sylvias Chapbook Prize for Arab in Newsland, and the author of Water & Salt, a book of poems from Red Hen Press published in April 2017, which won the Washington State Book Award. You can follow her on Twitter @LKTuffaha. Palestinian MAHMOUD DARWISH was born in al-Birwa in Galilee, a village that was occupied and later razed by the Israeli army. Because they had missed the official Israeli census, Darwish and his family were considered “internal refugees” or “present-absent aliens.” Darwish lived for many years in exile in Beirut and Paris. He is the author of over 30 books of poetry and eight books of prose, and earned the Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize from the Lannan Foundation, the Lenin Peace Prize, and the Knight of Arts and Belles Lettres Medal from France (excerpted from the Poetry Foundation). FADY JOUDAH has published four collections of poems, The Earth in the Attic, Alight, Textu, a book-long sequence of short poems whose meter is based on cellphone character count; and, most recently, Footnotes in the Order of Disappearance. He has translated several collections of poetry from the Arabic. He was a winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition in 2007 and has received a PEN award, a Banipal/Times Literary Supplement prize from the UK, the Griffin Poetry Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He lives in Houston, with his wife and kids, where he practices internal medicine. REFERENCES "To Our Land" by Mahmoud Darwish, English translation by Fady Joudah; Palestinian Deceleration of Independence; "A Conversation With Fady Joudah" (Kenyon Review) "Remembering Palestinian Poet Mahmoud Darwish 10 years after his death" (The National, August 2018)

We're live! In this, our first episode, you'll hear us discuss the virtues and vices of chapbooks. We we interview the inimitable Lena Khalaf Tuffaha over Sonnet Spiced Coffee. LENA KHALAF TUFFAHA is an American poet, writer, and translator of Palestinian, Jordanian, and Syrian heritage. She is the winner of the 2016 Two Sylvias Chapbook Prize for Arab in Newsland, and the author of Water & Salt, a book of poems from Red Hen Press published in April 2017, which won the Washington State Book Award. You can follow her on Twitter @LKTuffaha. SONNET SPICED COFFEE RECIPE The word “sonnet” comes to us from the Italian word “sonetto,” meaning little song. We don’t know exactly what song is inspiring this coffee, but we’re pretty sure it would sound amazing if sung by Fairuoz (iconic Lebanese diva, see picture below). This drink is pretty easy to make (assuming you know how to make coffee in a French Press and have a bean grinder). Simply coarse-grind your coffee beans and spices together, then proceed with your coffee brewing per usual. Sonnet Spiced Coffee pairs splendidly with fresh satsumas, tiny porcelain cups, and this very episode. 8 tablespoons of coffee (we used Peets “Big Bang” blend) 3 black peppercorns dash of cardamom dash of cinnamon dash of nutmeg dash of crushed clove REFERENCES "Translation" and "Water & Salt" by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha Invasive Species (Nightboat) by Marwa Helal "Imagining a Vernacular Future", A Brooklyn Poets class taught by Marwa Helal American-Arab Anti-Discrimination committee (ADC) Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) "'I Belong to Many Places': A Q&A with Washington State Book Award Winner Lena Khalaf Tuffaha" (The Seattle Times, December 2018) "Hold Up! Time For An Explanatory Comma" (NPR Code Switch) "Dozens of Palestinian Detainees on Hunger Strike Are Hospitalized" (The New York Times, May 2014) "Ana La Habibi" by Fairuz Touched (Sibling Rivalry Press) by Luther Hughes

The Poet Salon is a podcast where poets talk over drinks prepared especially for them. Your hosts are Gabrielle Bates, Luther Hughes, and Dujie Tahat. In our first season, we'll interview some of the very best in the world. Each of our guests will span two episodes over two weeks. In the first episode with them, we have a wide-ranging conversation about their work. In the second, we have shorter discussion about a poem our guest loves.  Our first episode drops January 9, 2019. Keep up with us on our website (thepoetsalon.com) and on Twitter (@poetsalonpod).