Episode Forty-four

Photo of Yanyi, taken by him

In this episode I spoke with Yanyi about his new book, Dream of the Divided Field, and his newsletter, The Reading.

Yanyi is the author of Dream of the Divided Field (One World Random House, 1 March 2022) and The Year of Blue Water (Yale University Press 2019), winner of the 2018 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize. His work has been featured in or at NPR’s All Things Considered, New York Public Library, Granta, and New England Review, and he is the recipient of fellowships from Asian American Writers’ Workshop and Poets House. He holds an MFA in Poetry from New York University and was most recently poetry editor at Foundry. Currently, he teaches creative writing at large and gives writing advice at The Reading.

Yanyi's website
You can purchase Dream of the Divided Field here
Yanyi's Twitter
Yanyi's Instagram

Various books, movies, podcasts, etc. mentioned in this episode:

• Algorithm crowd sounds

• Surviving R. Kelly docuseries

• Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew

• AI generated imagery

  • @images_ai

  • WOMBO Dream

  • DALL-E

• Virgina Woolf’s audio BBC interview

• When We Were Young Festival and its much parodied poster

• Black Mountain Poets

  • Olson’s "Projective Verse" manifesto, some explicit field talk

• Lydia Davis’s "Hand" story (this is the whole story lol):

  • "Beyond the hand holding this book that I’m reading, I see another hand lying idle and slightly out of focus — my extra hand."

  • (more stories here)

  • "The Cows" chapbook

• Yanyi's newsletter

  • Letter on why he left Substack

• Yanyi at the Poetry Project discussing de las Rivas's "Black Sun" and fascist dogwhistling in contemporary poetry

• Ghost, the platform Yanyi uses to now send his newsletters

• bell hooks’s Teaching to Transgress full PDF

• Tell Them Anything You Want: A Portrait of Maurice Sendak documentary

• Laura Engels Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie series

• FEELING ASIAN podcast episodes:

  • An Evening With Two Asian Therapists (feat. Peter Adams, Ph.D and Melissa Yao, Ph.D)

  • Asian Seeking Asian (therapists)

Editor and Social Media Manager: Mitchel Davidovitz

Host and Producer: Avren Keating

Sound of Waves Breaking: Sounds from this video of Merlin, my sweet 5-year-old Frenchie that died of a brain tumor in-between recording and editing this episode. I love you, little bubs.

Episode Twenty-one

This month I got to chat with Kayleb Rae Candrilli. Kayleb is author of What Runs Over, winner of the 2016 Pamet River Prize, with YesYes Books. What Runs Over is a 2017 Lambda Literary finalist for Transgender Poetry. Candrilli is published or forthcoming in Puerto del Sol, Booth, RHINO, Cream City Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, Adroit, Bettering American Poetry, Boaat Press, Vinyl, CutBank, Muzzle, New Orleans Review, and many others.

They have served as the nonfiction editor of the Black Warrior Review and as a feature editor for NANO Fiction. They are now an Assistant Poetry Editor for Boaat Press. In 2015, Candrilli was a Lambda Literary Emerging Fellow in Nonfiction, and again in 2017 as a fellow in poetry. Kayleb is a Best of the Net winner and has been nominated for Pushcart Prizes (in prose and poetry) and for Best New Poets. They were also a 2017 recipient of a Leeway Art and Change Grant.

Kayleb's website

Purchase What Runs Over here.

Artists and musicians mentioned in this episode:

• Nabila Lovelace, Sons of Achilles
• Shaelyn Smith, The Leftovers  
• Jamie Mortara, GOOD MORNING AMERICA I'M HUNGRY AND ON FIRE
• Chase Berggrun, R E D
• Linette Reeman
• Post-ironic bummer pop band Coping Skills
• Swedish EDM artist Kasbo

The Sound of Waves Breaking is here.

This episode is edited by Mitchel Davidovitz. 
Mitchel Davidovitz is also the Social Media Manager.

You can contact Avren on twitter @WavesBreakPod, and on Facebook at Waves Breaking Podcast, and through email wavesbreakingshow@gmail.com