O, Word?

A conversation with Texas Poet Laureate Amanda Johnston about the anthology, the power of poetry to build community, and freedom Amanda Johnston is a writer, visual artist, the 61st Texan Poet Laureate, and founder of Torch Literary Arts. Get full access to O, Word? at oword.deesoulpoetry.com/subscribe

A conversation with jason b. crawford about their collection YEET!, finding a safe home for Black people, and how we write ourselves alive jason b. crawford (He/They) , born in Washington, DC and raised in Lansing, Michigan, is the author of Year of the Unicorn Kidz . Their second collection, YEET! is the winner of the Omnidawn 1st/2nd Book Prize and was published Fall 2025. At the time of this re...

A conversation with Nick Martino about Nonce Forms, The Possibilities of Visual Poetics, and Writing Towards Surprise Nick Martino is a poet and teacher from Milwaukee. His debut poetry collection, Scrap Book (from Alice James Books) won the 2024 Alice James Editors’ Choice Award and will be published in June of 2026. His poems have been published in Best New Poets , Narrative , Ninth Letter , The...

A conversation with Jonny Teklit about Joy as Poetic Practice, Poetic Influences, and How Joy Can Push Us Towards Action Jonny Teklit is an award-winning poet who has had work appear in The Academy of American Poets , The New Yorker , The Adroit Journal , and elsewhere. His poems have been anthologized in Poemhood: Our Black Revival and The Gift of Animals: Poems on Love, Loss, and Connection . He...

Talking with Alison C. Rollins about Black Bell, the poetics of referentiality, and performance as mode of collective meaning-making Alison C. Rollins is the author of the poetry collections Black Bell and Library of Small Catastrophes . Rollins holds an MFA from Brown University and is an assistant professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She was awarded a 2023-2024 Harvard Ra...

A conversation with Tariq Thompson about Rhythm, Hip Hop as a Guiding Force, and the Muscularity of Language Tariq Thompson is a poet and educator from Memphis, Tennessee. He’s the author of the chapbook LONE LILY (from Sunset Press, 2021). His poetry has appeared in the American Poetry Review , The Adroit Journal , Split Lip Magazine and elsewhere. Thompson was a finalist for a 2023 Ruth Lilly an...

Talking with Summer Farah about Repetition, leaning into frantic energy, and the value of revisitation Summer Farah is a Palestinian American writer, editor, and zine-maker from California. She is the author of the chapbook, i could die today and live again , poems inspired by the legend of Zelda and published by Game Over Books in 2004. Her debut collection, The Hungering Years is forthcoming fro...

Talking with I.S Jones about Bloodmercy, the complicated presence of God, and cataloging the milestones of girlhood I.S. Jones is the author of Bloodmercy , chosen by Nicole Sealey as the winner of the 2025 APR/Honickman First Book Prize, and the chapbook Spells of my Name , selected by Newfound in 2021 for their Emerging Writer series (and might I add, an O, Word? 2025 5-star read). Currently, sh...

Talking with Victoria Mbabazi about persona, anger as a motivating force, and the merits of hate. Victoria’s work can be found in several literary journals. They have two chapbook collections, chapbook , through Anstruther Press, published in 2021, and Flip from Knife Fork Books in 2022. Both are sold out. However, their first full length poetry collection, The Siren in the Twelfth House , from Pa...

Talking with Kay E. Bancroft about the hybridity, getting funky on the page, and messing with documents as an entryway to poetry Get full access to O, Word? at oword.deesoulpoetry.com/subscribe

Talking with Remica Bingham-Risher about the archive, grandmothers, and the work of witness Get full access to O, Word? at oword.deesoulpoetry.com/subscribe

Note: This transcription is edited to facilitate the reading experience. To see every word uttered in this recording, please click the “Transcript” button for captioning you can follow :) DeeSoul Carson : And it was just like, what a crazy thing to say! You know, you’re a professor of poetry at this big institution and you’re just like, people of color aren’t doing sonnets?!?! They aren’t doing so...

In this episode of O, Word?, DeeSoul reflects on Summer Work, Summer Reading, and Keeping Himself Accountable to a Thing No One Has Asked Him to Do Get full access to O, Word? at oword.deesoulpoetry.com/subscribe