In this exclusive interview with CBC’s Eleanor Wachtel, 2022 Griffin Poetry Prize international winner Douglas Kearney delves into how hip-hop and Black vernacular traditions have shaped his poetry, the impact of growing up with a “constant overlapping of languages” in Altadena, California, the joy of creating the page as a stage, his lifelong ambition to be a werewolf, and more!
Kearney encourages us to consider the pleasure of reading his “performative typography” poems out loud:
I’m very excited when I hear people say ‘I feel like I have to read it aloud,’ because that, to me, is like, ‘Yes! Yes! You play it. Here is the sheet music. You play it!’
Douglas Kearney
